Tag Archives: nostalgia

and there

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there are mornings like this which linger across days
gentle mornings filled with the wonder of your presence
and the touch of your skin against mine
and they wrap themselves around me
for longer than i ever dared dream

yeah, so i get a little sappy sometimes. so what.

i haven’t been writing much, because i’ve been pretty happy. i’m of that sadly predictable bent that requires conflict, angst and/or depression to write “artistically”, and i just haven’t really been conflicted, full of angst, or depressed.

yeah, sorry, i know how terribly much that stinks.

it was a long, cold, wet spring, and now the summer whistles by far too quickly, with far too little time for doing all the things i’d really like to do, but that’s how it always is.

i’m happy, but i think internally i may still be at a crossroads. the determination of how, exactly, to move forward beneath the light of some things, while firmly outside the light of other things, weighs on me now in ways that i don’t find comfortable. so much change has been, and so much continues, but what stands before me now seems simultaneously insurmountable and insubstantial. i feel that i can just barely discern what’s standing before me, but i know damn well i have to cross it before i can truly begin moving on.

and one of those things….

little deaths

it took a couple of little deaths for some things to begin healing inside me. the first of those was back in January, where complete, abject avoidance proved to be the stronger suit. it was a tough series of cards to play as an empath, i don’t mind admitting, but having played them, i know i am the better for it. i couldn’t hold anything resembling a coherent conversation with that one, and as a result, i am now even further removed from my past and the dreams i once dared to dream.

but that was quite fitting, after all.

the other little death occurred just recently, and while i still fail to understand just where exactly that particular train got derailed, i’m by no means pleased that i had to once again play the “unconcerned non-observer” role to get by. the words should have been enough, and the actions (or lack thereof), would have made my intentions clear to even the most deluded. but no, somehow, they were not. so that one wandered away in a fit of peevish self-pity void of exactly what i knew all along was lacking: a true to desire to change the reality in which she had entombed herself.

life goes this way, sadly, far too often. no one has piqued my pity and disappointment quite as well as these two fine souls have managed, and they are gone.

little deaths: little things turned grey within me, but i hope their lives prosper in positive ways.

(for that last one, a restatement of the obvious ~ in peace)

you knew
what it would and wouldn’t
be, let alone become,
long before i ever had the opportunity
to confuse it all. you knew
what would fail to move
before you set about to redefine
the benefit in attempting
to change what you knew would be
unmoved.

you knew
the realities surrounding
you, and chose to color them
in forgettable hues. you knew
where i stood, and transported
me, redefined me, and who i became
through your eyes was unrecognizable,
so i stepped away, thus becoming
unmoved.

the 23rd/24th of this month marks the completion of our first year together, ghosts, memories and all. we don’t like being apart from each other.

and that is the greatest gift i have ever been given.

inconsequentially yours

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words do not begin…

it recycles, and that annoys. but, it’s never the same.

the problem with me is that i remember. i don’t have the type of brain that memorizes every word that is spoken or written, whether outbound or inbound, but i remember so much else, so many other details, usually visual or aural, that will haunt me all of my days.

just this past week, unbidden, came sounds from the night of my high school graduation dinner, an event that hasn’t entered my mind again in over twenty years. that’s what i mean by haunting. i remember, but i can’t always call things up at will. instead, the memories come almost randomly, and leave me cold.

and so, words do not begin…

sometimes, i catch myself about to do something that i’ve done before, and if it’s that type of thing that doesn’t really need to be done in the first place, well, that irks. recycling is good for the environment, but this kind of recycling makes me worry about my brain. i don’t like redundancy, even if those who were to receive what i’ve had done or said would never have had a way to know i was being redundant.

maybe even especially then, when i know it’s only me that i annoy.

and words do not even remotely begin…

i was chatting with a friend last night, and something came out of my mouth that surprised me: that within the short span of less-than-three (pardon the pun) months, i have learned to love without being selfish about it. that’s a bigger accomplishment than you might think. and more than that, i’ve learned to keep myself above the age-old tendency to lose myself in the emotion, in her. it is a different thing: one that took far longer than it should have, to accomplish.

and while the words fail to suffice to describe it all, neither do they prevent the enjoyment anymore.

i started writing this in late august, and got sidetracked with life, living, and the pursuit of not being borne down by the music i listen to (the things that remind me of where i’ve been, what i’ve done, and whom i’ve known, in other words), into the depths of remorse and might-have-beens. the vectors of certain tangents in my life are helical: not quite recursive, but they come back around, time and time again, and the where-i-was is in view for long, painful moments until i move up and away and around and back again.

i had to make a break with the one who haunted me all those years. it’s not a clean break, and if i think about it (or her) too much, it’s the one thing that can actually bring me to tears. it’s a regret, true and thorough. i had intended never to have such a thing, but there it is. i’ve cried more for her than i have for the mother of my children, but the tears, now, lack the power to sway me.

on marriage and betrothal

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my next-to-the-last wedding of the year is today. i’ve got a BAD sore throat. thus far in my career, i’ve managed not to have to work a wedding sick, so this will be first for me.

but i thought of this because of what my daughter said about staying away from guys right now and not getting married EVER. i SO felt the same way about women from time to time. several times, even. but in fact, i met the Spouse Unit just three weeks after i had TOTALLY given up on women. our meeting was completely unexpected, and our getting together was more than a surprise. so every time i shoot a wedding, i’m reminded of all the things that were pouring through my head ‘back then’ (positive and negative), and i’m still somewhat amazed that people actually want to get married, despite being happily married myself.

i was engaged three times in my life. sometimes when i look back, the acts of engagement were almost more significant than the acts of marriage that i’ve partaken in. they were emotional promissory notes that seemed to me to have more significant as a promise held in trust as opposed to the exercising of that trust. and if it weren’t for the exercising of Will, which is what a marriage ceremony is about, one of those earlier promises would still have been in effect.

which is not to belittle marriage in any way. there is something grand and inspirational about any marriage, as two people commit before witnesses to join their lives together, even when that joining is only a formality. i normally allow myself to get somewhat caught up in those emotions while i’m capturing wedding scenes, but with the way i feel today, i believe i’ll be more of an impartial observer. perhaps i’ll see some things today that alter my perception of this process.

regardless, every wedding i serve reminds me of my own wedding to the Spouse Unit and as such, during every wedding i serve, i silently renew my vows to her. it’s the least i can do, i suppose, since the weddings are part of what keeps me from spending more time with her and our children.

things i would say (ii)

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there was another reason for my wanting to hang out on the River Walk while the Spouse-Unit was down there. the vast majority of my adoptive mother’s watercolors is centered around the River Walk, and all of us used to accompany her to art shows and the like, many of which were hosted down on the River Walk as well. despite other issues, my return was a bit of homecoming in that regard, at least.

i said before that i shot the River Walk the most with the Lensbaby 3G because it does an effective job of how i probably actually saw things as a kid down there—focused upon whatever it was i was focused upon, and not much else. i saw a lot more on this trip than i shot, but i don’t think i saw enough.

(the double-entendres will be free today, by the way)

it took me the better part of fifteen years after i joined the Army to get full control over my creative expression again. i don’t blame anyone for that; it’s just the way things went, and my enlistment was entirely voluntary, albeit pressured. my adoptive mother always supported my musical endeavors, but never really encouraged any dabbling in the physical arts. in retrospect, i wish she had, but finding my own way into this was probably more appropriate in many regards.

if i could say anything to her, i would thank her for the artistic example, and even the inspiration, which she quietly and unobtrusively supplied. some of her old oil paintings are still in my head when i dream. and so very many of her works, as best as i can remember them, are what come to mind on those occasions when i slip and think of San Antonio as “home”.

good wishes

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(new light, recently unhidden, so i respond thusly….)

to The Elder and Unknown….

~would that i could undo what was done, and do what was left undone, without jeopardizing my personal integrity and dignity, and the obligation to Country undertaken in the hopes of supporting your brother, for whom i was unwillingly disallowed to provide.

~would that issues of honor and integrity never conflict, and would that they, in their inherent and natural antipathy, never compel the irrevocable choice between one or the other.

~would that you knew that when you have suffered, i have suffered with you—not to chastise you for causing me pain, but that you would know that you have never suffered alone.

~would that eighteen years be shorter, less heavier, and devoid of so much i will never know, nor fully understand.

~would that you know how very proud i am of you, for your responses to my wife espouse a dignity and comprehension far beyond what i possessed at your age.

to #1 Son and #1 Daughter….

~would that you be less like me, at least in some regards, but know that i admire and respect you both for those similarities, and for the differences that make you unique.

~would that you know that come what may, my heart and soul are yours, and i will never turn away from you just because something in our past is painful, hurtful, and wrapped in personal guilt. and that if ever i seem to do so, you must not accept it.

to Maurya….

~would that there was some way—any way—for me to know the daughter that i very much wanted to raise, without causing you any further pain whatsoever.

~would that i could undo what was done to you, and do what was left undone for you, without jeopardizing my personal integrity and dignity, and the obligation to Country undertaken in the hopes of supporting our son, for whom i was unwillingly disallowed to provide.

~would that you remember that once, i had given you everything that i was and desired to be, and would that the inadequacy, incompatibility, and immaturity of such could have been perceived before we caused each other such pain.

to the Spouse Unit….

~would that you accept my utmost regard and admiration for taking on the challenge that has become my life, and for standing beside me as i face the consequences for past actions that in no way anticipated or involved you.

~would that you continue to look past and through and over these scars and continue to perceive this person whom you honor with your love, as the person he has ever striven to be and never perceives himself capable of becoming.

The Land of Nostalgia and What If (iii)

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long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, my first love was Music, and She was mine i was Hers. those who received a copy of “the sabre” may remember that quite a few of those 333 poems made references to musical inspiration. as well, and undocumented, many of those “poems” were lyrics i created to remember melodies that i didn’t have the time or equipment to otherwise record.

{and yeah, on a side note, the number 333 was significant, because i consider myself only half evil. shut up.}

the ghost that i laid to rest, and which i’ve honestly not discussed with anyone yet, was a surprising ghost to revisit and to now have at ease, for it was a ghost in the form of a blockage. meeting up with this ghost was neither foreseen nor planned, and now creates an interesting conundrum for me. i already find myself once again driving around and humming to myself instead of listening to the radio. anybody got a decent midi keyboard they want to donate to the cause? it ain’t like i’m allowed to buy photographic equipment these days, let alone musical stuff. i have songs in my head again, and many of them were originally composed when i was somewhere between the ages of 10 and 18, riding on my bike in my old neighborhood.

The view going south down Mertz Avenue at Senova Street. The title given to this photo in the popup is from Simple Mind’s “This Earth That You Walk Upon”, one of my favorite songs at the time I left San Antonio (most memories associated with this song are actually from Austin, though), and which literally happened to come up in my playlist rotation while I was writing this.

so, as i already stated, and as you have probably already guessed, i went by the house i grew up in. it’s a humorously eclectic thing i do, this working in numbers. i drove by the house exactly three times. it’s effectively been twenty-one years since i was there (in fact, i got a kick out of telling people i was last in San Antonio an “adult ago”—think about it….), which is the seventh third (or the third seventh, if you prefer). either way, basic primes hold a relevance for me for many reasons. numerologically speaking, 3 is the number which relates to resurrection, revival and rejuvenation and 7 is the law of motion. any other Jungian correlations are strictly intentional (so there, hah!)

my first drive down Teakwood Lane was a bit disconcerting. during my last couple of years of high school, there was a field across Jones-Maltsberger Road from us that used to have baseball fields when i was younger, and which was being built up. in fact, the construction site itself became a haunt of mine, but since i have fonder memories of being much younger, i found that having the whole area between Jones-Maltsberger and the MacAllister Freeway built up to be just kind of sad.

the tree on the left of these photos and i used to have a great relationship, despite my falling out of it one year. the big knot up front was depressing to see. when i was last there for a brief drive-by when i brought The Elder and Unknown and her mother home back in 1990, that was a fresh cut. the limb-that-used-to-be was a handy foothold, and thus a launchpad for many a youthful excursion in responsibility-evasion.

i took these two photos on the second drive-by. anxious at the potential of accidentally running into my adoptives, i didn’t really have the camera setup for high-speed snaps while moving on the first drive-by, and while i see now that those photos were easily correctable, i wasn’t confident of that at the time.

on the third drive-by, which was just after i met with Sherri briefly out at MacArthur Park, my adoptive father was home, standing in the window of the den (under the carport) and talking on the phone. in the space of a second or slightly more, i thought and re-thought about stopping approximately seven times, while simultaneously setting the camera down. i luckily managed not to rear-end a parked car on the side of the street and called it quits and went on back downtown to the Spouse-Unit .

it was just a brief glance, but it was far more disconcerting than seeing the commercialization of a formerly relatively open field. the image hasn’t been in my dreams as of yet, but i’m sure it will be soon enough

The Land of Nostalgia and What If (ii)

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Sherri (who sadly falls into the category of “old friend”) has been bugging me about how the trip went for me. sadly, i am still assimilating it. she also thinks the “installment method” sucks. oh well. there’s always a critic somewhere. responsibilities aside, the reason why i’m doing the installment thing is because one post would be terribly long, and i’m told i’m better when taken in smaller doses.

so….hrm….where to start with this one?

i guess i’ve already noted the most important part: we didn’t get to meet The Elder and Unknown after all. she won’t be getting her driver’s license until her 18th birthday, and since she is living again with her mother and step-father, her personal freedom is anything but expansive. the Spouse-Unit did call her and talk with her a bit, which i think was odd for both of them, but pleasant as well. i think it meant a lot to The Elder and Unknown that we did try to meet with her. the Spouse-Unit says she didn’t sound too terribly Texan, so i guess there’s hope for her future! (oh, me SO funny).

we stayed at the Hyatt downtown along the River Walk, as i mentioned before. it looks something like this from the River level, and this is the inside of the hotel. the last time i was there was my senior year of high school for the Texas State Choir concert. they made us all stay there, even though some of us were from San Antonio. talk about blurred memories! (in a positive way!)

our room was on the second floor (which because of two floors of conference and meetings rooms, is actually the fourth floor), but i did go up top and take some photos looking down. a little over halfway up on this photo, just right of center, one floor is jogged in a little to the right. right there was the room we stayed in.

when i have the time to get a gallery of photos from the trip up online, you’ll see that i frequently pretended #1 Daughter and #1 Son were along, and i tried to capture things i knew they’d like to see. however, when i get that gallery up, i know i’m going to be asked to get other galleries up, so i have to go carefully with these things. wedding season approacheth, and all that….

this was taken a few minutes prior to the photo i included upon my return—the bridge down there being where i took that photo from. this part of the River Walk is not a natural part of the river. i think it was made sometime during the 1970′s. just past that bridge and to the right, is the Convention Center. to the left is some sort of shopping extravaganza from hell that didn’t exist when i was growing up….er….getting older….down there. it was under construction when i briefly returned to San Antonio after Basic Training. like any mall, it has a cheap food court, so the Spouse-Unit and i ate over there a couple of times.

so, i guess that’s enough tap-dancing around impressions of the place while playing tour guide to my semi-nostalgic reminiscences.

to be honest, i could have driven around San Antonio anywhere i wantedd (traffic and reconstruction endeavors allowing, of course), but i didn’t. on the initial drive in from the airport downtown to the Hyatt, it was immediately clear that we were simply visiting some big-ass city. since in so many other interpretations i wasn’t coming home, i slipped into a comfortable tourist mode. the Spouse-Unit and i had to do the same thing over the summer when we visited Albuquerque. the River Walk was “safer” in that regard: it’s changed a bit, and a couple of the restaurants i liked back then no longer exist. but even with those changes and the construction on some parts of it, it felt a lot more homier than anywhere else i visited. plus being so picturesque, it was much more personally gratifying to hang out down there and shoot than slog around in the traffic and try to catch brief glimpses of half-remembered places.

i did go back to my old neighborhood, and will probably write about that little excursion next. like everything else, it had changed a lot. i drove by old schools and places where i used to hang out: all measurably changed, not that i expected anything else. change is always noticeable when you aren’t in the middle of it happening. but since i was pretty young when i left, and hadn’t really been driving all that long either, my memories of San Antonio are ultimately pretty confined to downtown, my old neighborhood (several square miles if you include where we lived across to where i went to school and where many of my friends lived), Loop 410, places i went to church, the Mission Trail, etc.

actually, i remember more detail about Albuquerque than i do San Antonio, and i spent barely 1/3 of the amount of time there. San Antonio has just become so huge, i wonder if, unless you live there or visit frequently, it’s really much like coming home for anyone. extrapolating from the 2000 Census, the city is pretty close to twice as populated as it was when i left back in the mid-1980′s, and it shows no signs of slowing down. ah….progress….

i used this lens a lot along the River Walk, largely because it’s representative of my memories of growing up down there. an inherent myopia and a type of fixation that was rarely exactly on center. the particular location i shot this from makes it look like i was on a boat myself, but i wasn’t, nor was i in the water (ew! yes, it really is that green without any early Saint Paddie’s Day shenanigans).

it might be fun to take the kids down there someday, but that would probably be more of a Six Flags/Sea World kind of thing—which brings to mind that those places didn’t exist while i was growing up there, either. i’m glad i went along with the Spouse-Unit on this trip, though. i seem to have finally laid to rest at least one old ghost (i’ll write about that later), and seeing the changes to some of the places that used to haunt my dreams has brought me at least a little peace.

The Land of Nostalgia and What If (i)

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my week-long adventure into “The Land of Nostalgia and What If” actually began with a trip down to Saint Louis, which beyond being a brief stop on the way to and from basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri back in 1986, is actually neither the Land of Nostalgia or What If.

we left early in the morning of March 1 on a chartered bus, just slightly ahead of a local snowstorm and directly into a good-sized blizzard. we made it through in one piece, so to speak, but much of the trip looked something like this:

we passed a snowplow that had gotten stuck in a ditch, after which point those who were not yet nervous about the trip certainly became so. the folks from Brookings just sat in the back and drank. i would have shot the snowplow, but there unfortunately wasn’t enough contrast for the camera to autofocus as we “sped” by on the interstate at 25 miles an hour, and not enough time to switch to manual, even at that speed, due to the limited visibility. it was kind of hairy for a while, as we decided not to pull off, concerned that if we did, the highway would get closed ahead of us and we would be stuck in the middle of nowhere for goodness knows how long. which for me could have meant missing the plane from Saint Louis to San Antonio and wasting non-refundable tickets.

eventually (13 hours for a 10-hour trip, so i guess it could have been worse), we made it down to the US Youth Soccer Association National Workshop, where we had an okay time….”we”, by the way, being me and a couple dozen other soccer-heads. one of our local coaches was named the Boys Coach of the Year for the whole nation, which was really pretty cool: Chad O’Donnell is the first Coach of the Year from South Dakota. unfortunately, he was stuck in Sioux Falls because USYSA insisted on flying him out, and the airport was closed due to the blizzard.

i roomed with Loren, one of our Emeritus referees (which in soccer terms means he’s retired but still active), and he got our room switched up to the 19th floor, so we had a pretty decent view of the less-than-stunning side of Saint Louis, but i still managed to pull this out of it:

the workshop itself was relatively boring, and the “referee” classes and seminars were largely geared for referee administrators, so i didn’t come away from it with as much new information to use as a referee or referee instructor as i would have liked. we did learn about all the things the FIFA referees for the World Cup had to do, which was at least interesting, and we picked up a few tips on referee retention that maybe we can put to use. other than that, and maybe because i was simply anxious to get down to San Antonio, i was basically relieved when the last day of the workshop was over. our friendly bus driver dropped me off at the airport, and then i was truly headed for “The Land of Nostalgia and What If”.

my last two weeks.

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my life in songs that i can only wish i’d written.

this album came out a while before The Elder and Unknown was born. it was (and still is) one of my favorites at the time surrounding her birth. this song just came up in my random playlist. not an exceptionally remarkable coinkydink, given that most of my on-computer was ripped from my CD collection, but remarkably apropos to the moment, anyway.

from Peter Murphy’s “Love Hysteria”

My Last Two Weeks

When I returned
You buried my last two weeks
My last two weeks
Of my new times
So it didn’t seem like
A wasted mouthful
A wasted mouthful
Because of a trip
That was trapped inside you

I was trapped inside you
And always imagined
That I could
I always imagined
Imagined I would
Conjure you up
Conjure you up
So it didn’t seem like
It didn’t seem like

I was conditioned
I was conditioned about that
So it didn’t seem like
A wasted mouthful
Am I untruthful
Am I untruthful
As a result of being
Maybe
Maybe it was too soon

The red rose
I liken it to the flicker of the pure
Fleeting moments
Precede our actions
Light that’s not burning
Light that’s not burning
No more lost sinking feeling
Tethered to your shoe
Tethered to you

We ask the controller
He sends us flames
Our lying bodies sleep
His whispered word says
Ah this is how
This is how it looks
From where we weep
Tethered to red rose
Tethered to your shoe
To the seven of cups
Tethered to you

mental maundering

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and then, sometimes it dawnnes on you ~


the name Dawnne came about a long time ago, back when i was at the Presidio of Monterey at the Russian Language School. i coined it as a cognitive antonym to “dawn”.

of course, a simple google will readily show that there are no unique thoughts, and that several people named Dawnne are older than i.

yeah okay, and they all seem to be female. shut up.

before The Elder and Unknown was born, her mother and i made a list of names. (The Elder and Unknown) Rochelle Dawnne, a combination of names i selected, won out. when i met my natural parents in that same year and changed my name, “Dawnne” became a literal attachment to The Elder and Unknown, who was born a month after my change of name.

when The Elder and Unknown was four, i was asked to give up my rights to her so that her step-father could adopt her and place her on his insurance. as i’ve already noted here, that seemed to be the best thing i could do for her, so i did. when he adopted her, however, “Dawnne” was dropped from her name.

but that attachment, which was always subjectively tangential in its own way, was never broken.

she hasn’t chosen to respond to mom’s last communication for several days. since she corresponds via her computer at work, that could be for any number of reasons, so we’re not reading anything into it.

irony of ironies, the Spouse-Unit has a conference in San Antonio next week. i will be going with her, as we’ve never had the chance for me to show her around my old stomping grounds. it won’t be like going home, though, considering all that happened in what seems like so long ago. i wasn’t Dawnne back then. and heck, Six Flags, Sea World, and the huge Mercado that used to be just a quiet Riverwalk weren’t even built until after i had moved away.

it’ll be another excercise in tempered impatience, i suppose. i have interesting karma. i’m still undecided as to whether or not i should be looking forward to the next lifetime….