in an email exchange today my friend chris roberts wrote this:

One of the best things about Heaven, I believe, is the theater in which you learn all the stuff you didn’t know when you were here. I’ll hit the matinee to see what Jonah saw inside the whale, or learn what Kay Harris was really thinking when she broke up with me in 10th grade — in my brother’s car on Homecoming, after I’d paid for the corsage, the game, the meal, etc.

Or imagine asking: “Jesus, what was the 43rd nastiest thing I ever ate? I’m pretty sure I can’t handle knowing about the first 42.”

“And He shall wipe away our tears,” it says in Revelation, so I assume it means he’ll work on my gag reflex, too.

i’m just home from the premier of DANIELSON: A FAMILY MOVIE {OR, MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE HERE} that was celebrated with an appearance, performance and reunion of sorts, of the Danielson Famile at the Silverdocs Documentary Film Festival. and yes, you know who Danielson (Daniel Smith) is because Pitchfork just gave him a 9-point-something for his latest and greatest record (and certainly deserving of the high-marked review), SHIPS. the film was great- fun, funny, informative, and of course included brief moments featuring everyone’s favorite folky christian interstate love song writer and former danielson protege, sufjan stevens. the audience seemed to hang on suf’s every word, which is unfortunate because if youve ever heard sufjan speak you know he is not nearly as eloquent nor poetic as he is in lyric and song. and while i knew Smith and his label Sounds Familyre did a lot for sufjan (they were the first to publish Michigan and Seven Swans, and Sufjan recorded Swans with the help of Smith, in Smith’s parent’s basement), i had not ever realized the extent to which ol’ suf had bogarted Danielson’s gig. from taking Smith’s ideas of performing in costume, singing loud choir-like celebratory choruses, to writing orchestral-pop records with wide artistic concepts and allegorical spiritual themes tied to often arcane and obtuse references, Sufjan stole it all. or maybe danielson gave it to him. i’m certainly leaning one way, but the film doesnt actually push the audience to either conclusion. instead, its left open to interpretation or guesstimation or supposition or whatever you want to call it. and so, despite how great the film was or how much fun the exculsive danielson post-film concert was or how daniel smith seems to not be affected by sufjan’s popularity, i am kinda bummed because not only have i missed out by overlooking danielson’s music for a number of years, but i have instead been enamored by his prettier, more appealing, better marketed, easier to digest doppleganger.

oh well.

Mom, Dad, Brother and Little Sister climbed into the subway simultaneously. Somehow all four of them fit through the doorway at the same time- not that they were fat, its just unusual to see four people step onto the subway at the same time no matter their size. As they enter their eyes scann the car and they look for seats, but there are none and so they merge into the crowd of standing passengers. Mom and Dad hold onto a silver handrail, and Brother and Little Sister grab onto pant legs and shirttails. Brother’s shoes are the kind that lit up when he took a step, and Sister has a little pink backpack. I smile as they huddle together. Mom is cautious, Dad is stalwart and protective. He wears a strong, thick brown mustache and baggy cargo shorts. He somehow looks disproportionately more attractive than his wife- she is bookish and has thin windblown hair. They are tall, white, probably Midwestern. Their children are small, round-faced, most definitely adopted. I imagine the days and weeks and months the couple anguished over not being able to have children on their own, and then I imagine all the signitures that had to be signed on all the papers to adopt Yuqing and Zhang Le, who are now probably called Stephanie and Jason. Mom and Dad might’ve even gone all the way to China or Mongolia or Butan to pick them up, and I feel bad for not knowing the differences between the physical features of east asian children. Dad does a great job of making up for his impotence by acting protective and strong and by paying lots of attention to the kids. He is a good dad, but not necessarily a good father, and while mom is happy most of the time she secretly resents him for the Sunday mornings he spends watching the Packers instead of going to church. She doesnt mind that he doesnt make as much money as they need, and she knew he wasnt that smart ever since that day she met him in Math class at college and he asked if he could get the answer to problem #2. By the end of the semester they were sweethearts and in the Fall he had bought a ring and they moved into special housing for married couples. It was a tiny two room place made of concrete block with small windows, green carpet and a big metal door with three latch locks. They had a charcoal grill outside on the smooth, cold concrete slab sidewalk. She would smoke on that sidewalk when he wasnt around and then do her best to hide the butts. She thought that they’d have kids right after graduation. Who knew that hers would be made so many years later in China. But they were good kids, and they do their best to behave on the subway, until Stephanie starts climbing the hand rail, that is. They’d planned this vacation for months and were having such a good time and Dad promised Jason that they’d visit the Air and Space Museum. So, once at the Smithsonian stop they all grab hands and leave the train in the same way as they boarded.

Sometimes I wonder how many times I’ve said goodbye. And what I mean by “goodbye” isn’t “see you later” or “see you tomorrow.” What I mean by “goodbye” is the kind of goodbye thats meant to stick, the kind where you are leaving and really mean it, the kind when you know things are going to be different from the moment the word hits the air. What I find interesting about a true goodbye is its anti-climatic nature. Its supposed to be the word of closure, of wrapping things up, but it never feels that way. Goodbye should be weighty, it should be definitive, and yet there seems to always be a lingering afterthought that follows it, an “is this really it?” or an “is this the right thing to do?” that pulls the reigns on the power and finality of the statement. As I try to count the goodbyes I’ve said I think of the people that I’ve cared for most. I don’t seem to mind the countless number of acquaintances that have slipped out of the orbit of friendship and away from consistent communication without any sort of closure or final farewell. Its the people to whom I’ve said goodbye that are always the ones who meant the most and the ones who I want to find again.

The metro is only 5 or 6 blocks from my house. I walk to and from the station everyday as part of a routine that should be old and boring by now. But its actually the walk to the station that keeps my entire morning routine fresh. Each day I seem to find something new to notice on my walk, or if there is nothing new then I can rely on a few standard things to happen. I know that the stray cat who likes to dart out from the porch of the red house to crawl under the porch of the blue house next door will do so everyday at 8:07am. I know that Ill see my neighbor and he will refuse to say hello because he’s weird or maybe because he thinks I dont/wont like him because he’s weird and old and gay and lives by himself. After his snub Ill probably realize I left my blackberry or wallet at home, or that I forgot to put on my belt or shave or something, and I’ll have to turn around and walk back home. On my second attempt at walking to the metro Ill pass by the neurotic collie who barks at the wind while running back and forth in her owner’s yard, turning habitual running routes into trenches. I like that collie. I think I like the collie because she reminds me a bit of myself…running in the same circles day after day after day, making a bunch of noise and barking at nothing but the wind.

(WARNING: The next paragraph doesnt have anything to do with the rest of the post, and if this post were to be given to an editor then I am fairly certain that the next few sentences would be promptly and justly cut out. Should you want to skip ahead to the more relevant parts of this post, find the next section that begins with an ** ) So I like the Collie because she’s either a crazy bitch like myself or because she looks a lot like my first dog, Tippy. Tippy (and dont ask me how I, a 5 yr old boy at the time, came up with the name Tippy) was a great dog. But in those days my parents moved around a lot, and we had to give Tippy away when it came time to move to a new house that didnt have a fenced-in yard. Fortunately, my grandmother agreed to take Tippy in so that I could come over anytime and play with her. It was extra cool because grandma owned Tippy’s mother, Heather. Well, after a few weeks grandma got tired of having two dogs to feed and gave Tippy away without telling anybody. I can still remember the Sunday afternoon that we drove up to her house and found that Tippy was no longer in the backyard.

**It was quite windy this morning. So windy that a discarded newspaper had found a new life as a dozen different kites, each page swirling up and around and out- wherever the wind willed it to go. One page found its destiny with me as it tumbled over itself and collided and clung tightly around my leg. It refused to let go for nearly half a block, despite my best efforts to kick it away. Finally, the wind took to another direction, broke the page’s clasp and sent it away in the same tumbling movement with which it had met me.

(Heres the part where I make the turn from interesting observation to cliche object lesson through the use of heavy handed metaphor) As I continued my walk to the metro and left the pages skidding around the sidewalk I thought about something- I thought about how such an insignificant occurrence has such significant roots, how the so many lives and events had to happen to bring that newspaper to its spot on the sidewalk, and how so many lives and events had shaped the course my own life so that I could be there to meet that newspaper at that spot on the sidewalk.

And then I thought of how the winds of destiny (or fate or chance or sovereignty or Calvinist predestination- whatever you choose to call it) blow from directions unknown and usher people and events into our lives that serve to not only move along the timeline of life but act as a catalysts of the kind of people we become. Sometimes the events that shape us are profound, sometimes they go unnoticed until the moment we look to the past and see how a single insignificance turned out to be quite weighty in the whole scheme of things. And then there are the people, the consistent shuffle of souls that shifts throughout life, who tumble into our lives until we kick them away or until they are pulled away by a change in the winds of destiny. And no matter how long we live the wind wont ever stop blowing, bringing on change after change, and all we can really do is bark and howl at it, and then change.

i like to reason with the stars.
people never look at the stars. not in the city.
in the country, its different. people look at the stars there.
i am different.
i look at them. i see them.
and sometimes i reason with them.
does the world really exist? i ask.
i dont think the world exists.
its just pretend.

and next to the window, on my desk
there is a picture.
its old and yellow and i do not know
who is held within the frame.
but he knows me.
his eyes are always looking me.

the eyes always look alive
and they watch me.
they follow me wherever i go.
and every night the stars shine
and tell me that none of it really exists
but he watches to make sure
that everything stays the same.

The sky is keeping secrets from me. The answers are up there, somewhere, but tonight the universe is taunting me- the moon hangs in a cheshire grin, a perfect crescent smirk, and the stars are winking, concealing.

My newly formed day-in/day-out existence has been complicated. This morning, for the first time in years, there occurred to me the possibility of a search. I dreamed of the old apartment building I once inhabited. Well, I didnt dream so much as I awoke with the taste of it in my mouth, the queasy-musty taste of 1932 and Cedar. And I could swear that for a moment before my eyes cleared I could see Hannah laying in the doorway near the heater. Hannah was my roommates mutt. She was a good dog.

I remember the first time the search occurred to me. I came to in a rocking chair situated on a porch above the world (or at least the world sifted through a small country town) and i soaked everything in through rusted screens and dirty windows and jack kerouac. It was a great time, but you must consider that generally, the best times are for me the worst times, and that worst of times was one of the best.

But that was then, and this morning when I got up, I stared into the mirror as usual, showered, considered shaving, dressed and began to put the usual belongings into my pockets: wallet, notebook (for taking notes and writing down occasional thoughts), a pen, keys, ipod and the leash (otherwise known as the blackberry). They looked at the same time unfamiliar and full of clues. I stood in the center of the bedroom a stared at the little pile of things. What was unfamiliar about them was that I could see them. They might as well have belonged to someone else. I think a man can look at this little pile on his bedside table for thirty years and never once really see them. The pile is as invisible as his own hand.

Once I saw it, however, the search became possible. I poked through the little pile in search of a clue about as well as Vincent D’Onofrio on Law and Order pokes through the dead man’s possessions, using his pencil as a poker, his face squinted in a “I’m a tortured genius” sort of look.

The idea of a search comes to me again as I am on my way to work, riding the #32 bus across town. Its a bitterly cold day. The wind is fierce but the sun is big and bright. The monuments are casting long shadows, and my fellow riders are all squinting as the driver turns the bus onto 15th street and into the sun. Everything is orange.

What is the nature of this search, you ask?

Well, I dont know. But I have an idea that it might be simple- so simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what I, or the guy two rows in front of me on the bus, or the lady next to me taking up more than her allotted space, would undertake if we were not sunk in the everydayness of life. Everydayness is so blinding, so binding- so to even become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something, I think. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

So now if I could just figure out the “something” I am onto, and what the little pile of clues on my bedside table means, then some progress might be made.

Do you, my dear Watson, have any ideas?

“I show ya da dead place, babe…yeah, come ‘n go ‘n I take ya to dah dead swamp, mm hmm. Jes follah in ya car, babe.”

It sounded like a great suggestion despite coming from a rough looking 6 and a half foot tall cowboy hat wearing Cajun man who kept calling me “babe.”

Cue the dueling banjos from ‘Deliverance.’

Before agreeing to follow him I at least had to know what a dead swamp was, just so I would know what I was getting into. After all, a dead swamp could be a place where Cajuns kill city-slickers and dump their city-slicking asses in a grove of Cyprus trees, and thats the sort of information one needs to know before following a strange Cajun down some unmarked, unmapped, half-paved road through the swamp. So I ask, and in return I receive the “how the hell can you not know what a dead swamp is?” look from the fellow.

“Oh, come on,” I say. “You cant think that some art student from the suburbs is gonna know what you’re talking about, do you?”

He considered it for a moment. “OK babe, dah dead swamp is where dah salt watah come in and kilt da swamp. Swamp cant live in da salt watah. You like takin pichures of dem cyrpress, dontcha? They’s lots of dem in dah dead swamp. Mmm hmm.”

“Cool. Lets go,” I reply. I didn’t even think twice.

I followed his beat up Toyota truck for miles, levee after levee, around turns and over little draw bridges that would lift or turn to let shrimp boats through on their way back to dock. We drove forever down single lane roads that seemed to have no direction- they just snaked through the swamp on little rises of solid ground that was bounded on both sides by murky marsh. I didn’t know what I would’ve done if a car came from the other direction. There would be nowhere to go.

Everything was so green. Even the road seemed to have a mossy green color to it. It was like life was living all over everything. The air was dense and heavy and buzzed with the sound of tiny knats and mosquitos, and the cypress and Spanish moss created a dense canopy that filtered out most of the sky. Only long orange streams of sunlight seemed to break through, each one spotlighting a patch of palmetto plants or singling out some ancient cypress stump. Mile after mile the place pulsed with life.

And then it all stopped.

In a moment we were out of the green and into a place where the filtered sunlight became a broad colorless blast of humid heat over barren trees and brown water. Without a doubt, this was the dead swamp, and its given the name for a reason. It was big and open and desolate and still. I noticed that the only color came from the red glow of our brake lights as we came to a stop. I had never seen anything like it.

We parked on the road and got out. He left his truck door open, and the ding-ding-ding warning of the ajar door was the only thing to be heard until he said, “This iz dah dead swamp. Whatchoo think, babe?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Ah. Dis uh speshul place, dats fo sho. Mmm hmm.” He paused, looking. “Oooh-wee, you in fo a treat, babe! Look der- up in dat cypress. See dat, babe? Das un Ospree, mmm hmm.”

“A what? Where?”

“They-ur. Up in dat tree. You see dat Ospree?”

“No.”

“Look babe, its right dere.”

The hawkish bird flapped a wing.

“Oh, I see it!”

“Yeah, das an Ospree bird, babe. Dont see too many of dem. Mmm hmm.”

“Cool.”

I snapped a picture of the bird in the tree, not really because I thought it would make for a good photograph but because I thought I’d humor the guy because he was so excited about it.

I just went looking for the picture, along with all the others I made that day, but they are nowhere to be found. Instead of being sad or getting frustrated about losing the film I am glad to simply have the memory, to have these intangible images and feelings in my mind of a place that is now truly unreachable. Ill never go back to south Louisiana, and even if I did the Cajun man won’t be around to lead through the twists and turns in the roads. In fact, there is a good chance that the roads don’t exist anymore, and no one will ever get back there. I suppose in some way my memory is the only accesible thing about the dead swamp now, and I’m happy to show you the way, babe.

the snow is falling.
i watch from my window above the street. a cup of chamomille is steeping, steaming, and the streetlight is turning white into orange and gray. a set of footsteps on the sidewalk heads west and collides with a set going east. with each moment they fade.
who did they belong to? i consider. its quiet. and then the prints are gone, and my cup is empty.

its 10:17 pm on thursday. at this hour on this day 2 years ago i was a janitor on the graveyard shift and in the middle of mopping a long tile hallway in a large southern baptist church. the hall was one of many, all of them made up of non-descript light grey 12 inch squares that seemed to stretch out one after the other for miles and miles. and for each mile of tile there were hundreds of sunday school rooms, each in need of my care.

i would enter any of the rooms and find the same situation, each of them disheveled and telling a silent story of what had gone on earlier. the old brown metal fold-up chairs would be out of formal arrangement and twisted into sporatic clumps of assymetrical compositions. my perfect vacuum tracks would be erased with footsteps, and the chalk boards would be marked up with scripture verses and words like “sanctification” and “propitiation” and “jesus.” (here’s a hint…whenever you find yourself in a bible study and faced with a difficult question, just answer with “jesus” and 9 times out of 10 you’ll come out a-ok.) the wastebaskets would be overflowing with coffee cups and doughnut scraps or fried chicken bones and empty jugs of sweet iced tea. (another hint: any prayer meeting or bible study cant, nor shouldnt, properly start without doughnuts and coffee or conclude without fried chicken and sweet tea. there is a commandment for it written somewhere in the book of leviticus, i think.) sometimes i would get lucky and find some leftovers. during the clean up process i would almost always pick up someone’s forgotten study notes. i would even find bibles. you should see the pile of bibles we had in the lost and found. there sure are a lot of people not doing there daily reading…

but anyway, back to my janitorial duties- i could pick up 5 folding chairs at a time, 6 on a good day, and i had all of the room furniture arrangements memorized. 12 chairs in a semi circle for room 102, 3 straight rows of 9 chairs set at right angles in room 54, 3 round tables with 6 chairs at each table in room 319. after arranging furniture i might vacuum, but only if it was absolutely necessary. i hated vacuuming. but my feeling for mopping floors was different. i kind of enjoyed mopping floors. in fact, there is something zen about mopping a floor and then buffing it to a bright shine. im really not sure whats zen about it, mind you. im not even sure what “zen” actually means, but i like telling people that i found “zen” in janitorial work. it makes me sound interesting and multi-dimensional and sensitive.

as a janitor specializing in floor maintenance my sworn enemy was the ever present scuff mark. you know them- the black marks in floors created by the shoes of a lazy walker that refuses to properly pick up their feet while shuffling along. in the scuff marks i could seize the many secrets held in a person’s steps, reading the short black dots and long lines like morse code.

scuff marks make a clean floor look dirty, and on some nights i would just walk down a hall and kick them out with my shoe instead of mopping the entire floor. my battles with the scuff marks werent limited to the battlefields inside the church but extended outside the walls of fort jesus. i waged war on the scuffs on many fronts- at the grocery store and at the k-mart, enacting a comprehensive compulsion to rid the world of selacious stepping studders.

and today, whilst walking down a long corridor in an ancient building that once housed the department of war, my ongoing battle was loosened from a temporary truce, and i kicked a few scuffs out of the thick marble floor. a passer-by in an overpriced suit scoffed at me, but i dont care. what he doesnt know is that the path to enlightenment isnt going to be found in making marks while wearing italian loafers. instead, it can be found in the simplest of jobs, nobly kicking out the world’s footsteps before the next group comes along.