It’s Already There

When I first read it so many years ago, it made me cry. It makes me cry still. A beautiful writer, a wonderful friend who wrote a beautiful piece. For me. And now I share it with you.  Thank you Rex Holiday.

It’s Already There

I see it this way: from a guy who has pissed away more great chances in a week than most men will see in a year: I’ve been allowed to see incomprehensible scenery connected to a brain that “gets it”.

Without those missed chances I would have: never been able to speak of the pain of an aborted father in the throes of post-regret, nor spoken to others who are bleeding the same way. Never known the kind of fervor and spit and fire it takes to speak my mind into a howling wind and actually made it slice through.

Never known the dubious pleasure of bringing down a pseudo-Napoleon living as king of his particular hill in a school system I pay for.

Never heard the voice of a now-relieved-son thanking me for helping his invalid grandmother out of a winter storm

Never had the ocean-powered wave of gratitude wash over me when I, alone, stood with one, wrongly accused, against a courtroom full of antagonists. (Not-guilty, by the way)

Never known the sheer power of being the one in the fray who is COMMITTED.

Never been able to speak of true, unrequited, ripped-apart love to an adolescent who’s going through the same thing.

Never known the joy of vocally and VERY audibly cheering a teenager when they finally excelled at something and got their due for it.

Never seen the pain in a true friend’s eyes when they buried their youngest. Never been able to hold them and let them cry the way they would only in a true friend’s arms.

Never been blessed to help bear the pain of someone you love on any level.

Never felt so dirty and ashamed as to chase even my closest friends off.

Never felt the heat of a South Georgia summer.

Or the cold of a Kentucky ice storm.

Or the power of an Alabama thunderstorm.

Or the thundering beauty of a Mississippi sunset.

Or the caress of a Tennessee mountain morning.

Or the complete release of a hearty and block-shattering “KISS MY ASS” to authority.

Or of watching the pain

the pleasure

the ecstacy

the victory

of discovery.

Would never had heard the crowd’s approval swell like a big gentle wave in the warm Gulf.

Or my new bride, taking such care to dress in some kind of frilly underpinnings complete with garters and white stockings say, “…do you mind if we don’t”, on my wedding night.

Not a bit. I just drove three hours through nowhere, Mississippi to say to the hotel clerk, “I’ve waited 31 years to say this: I just got married, and I need a room.” I was tired. Be real.

I would have missed words like, “I do”, “You may take your planet home”, “Would you hand me the piano?”, “I want to try everything, tonight.”, and “Honey, wake up. Hannah Newton was killed last night in a car wreck. John was right behind her.”

Not all of these are pleasant or desirable but they are rich. A mosaic of life. If we didn’t like imperfection and character, photographs would far outsell paintings. It’s what we’re here for.

I would have missed the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd, and the cussing of the GM.

And I would have missed you and your smile.

Most of all.

Stop searching. It’s already there.

– Rex Holiday

Remembering Rex Holiday

The world lost a great soul today. Rob/Rex as many called him.  I called him friend, and it was an honor.  He ‘discovered’ one of my best friends and me, hired us and put us to work at the local radio station in my hometown- and inspired me to start what would be a 15 year career in broadcasting.  He was one of the best bosses I have ever had and he constantly encouraged others to be the best they could be.

I wrote a piece called Your Awakening several years ago, a piece about my search for love. And his response is below; describing his life and reassuring me that nothing was passing me by, that life not going as planned is a blessing, that I am, and what is inside of me right now, is enough, that I need not keep searching for what I thought I was missing in myself.  For he was a great writer as well.  Please enjoy the glimpse into the soul of a beautiful human being.
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Your Awakening Response:

Maybe.
I see it this way: from a guy who has pissed away more great chances in a week than most men will see in a year: I’ve been allowed to see incomprehensible scenery connected to a brain that “gets it”.
Without those missed chances I would have: never been able to speak of the pain of an aborted father in the throes of post-regret, nor spoken to others who are bleeding the same way. Never known the kind of fervor and spit and fire it takes to speak my mind into a howling wind and actually made it slice through.
Never known the dubious pleasure of bringing down a pseudo-Napoleon living as king of his particular hill in a school system I pay for.
Never heard the voice of a now-relieved-son thanking me for helping his invalid grandmother out of a winter storm
Never had the ocean-powered wave of gratitude wash over me when I, alone, stood with one, wrongly accused, against a courtroom full of antagonists. (Not-guilty, by the way)
Never known the sheer power of being the one in the fray who is COMMITTED.
Never been able to speak of true, unrequited, ripped-apart love to an adolescent who’s going through the same thing.
Never known the joy of vocally and VERY audibly cheering a teenager when they finally excelled at something and got their due for it.
Never seen the pain in a true friend’s eyes when they buried their youngest. Never been able to hold them and let them cry the way they would only in a true friend’s arms.
Never been blessed to help bear the pain of someone you love on any level.
Never felt so dirty and ashamed as to chase even my closest friends off.
Never felt the heat of a South Georgia summer.
Or the cold of a Kentucky ice storm.
Or the power of an Alabama thunderstorm.
Or the thundering beauty of a Mississippi sunset.
Or the caress of a Tennessee mountain morning.
Or the complete release of a hearty and block-shattering “KISS MY ASS” to authority.
Or of watching the pain
the pleasure
the ecstacy
the victory
of discovery.
Would never had heard the crowd’s approval swell like a big gentle wave in the warm Gulf.
Or my new bride, taking such care to dress in some kind of frilly underpinnings complete with garters and white stockings say, “…do you mind if we don’t”, on my wedding night.
Not a bit. I just drove three hours through nowhere, Mississippi to say to the hotel clerk, “I’ve waited 31 years to say this: I just got married, and I need a room.” I was tired. Be real.
I would have missed words like, “I do”, “You may take your planet home”, “Would you hand me the piano?”, “I want to try everything, tonight.”, and “Honey, wake up. Hannah Newton was killed last night in a car wreck. John was right behind her.”
Not all of these are pleasant or desirable but they are rich. A mosaic of life. If we didn’t like imperfection and character, photographs would far outsell paintings. It’s what we’re here for.
I would have missed the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd, and the cussing of the GM.
And I would have missed you and your smile.
Most of all.
Stop searching. It’s already there.

Rex Holiday

 

Avoiding Love is Finding Hell

A passage from C.S.Lewis from his book The Four Loves:

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one,     not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell…We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it. What I know about love and believe about love and giving ones heart began in this.

.Aaron Manley Smith wrote: “The hard part I’ve had to learn, as a man, when we truly love someone, is that, there comes a moment when we have to choose to humbly and peacefully take the beating because they need something to beat and you’re the only thing that will take it and turn it into the love they so desperately need and have been denied…”

Love is a word that inspires and haunts us. It is one of the most powerful things that drives us in our lives – love of a partner, of friends, the love of a parent to a child. What would we not do for love?

I don’t know the answer to that question. Or maybe I do. I will not become bitter, even in the throws of a broken heart. I will not close myself up, I will not put myself in the “casket” of Hell. The same love that God gives to me, flows through me and it must not stop there. It must be given to others – friends, family, and children. Contrary to the fairy tales, love is not always easy. It should not always be hard, but it often is. Because we are, as humans, imperfect and jagged. And we will inevitable hurt each other.

I prayed for something larger and bigger than myself to build. Something that was more important than just me. I had no idea how God might choose to put it in my life to answer that prayer, but at the cornerstone of it, I think, is Love.

But it is not easy, and it is not going to be easy. I face many hardships, questions and struggles in the future. Can I do this? Myself? Maybe I can’t, but Love can. Love will find a way. And on those days when I feel like I can’t, when my knees are shaking, my heart breaking, my soul hurting, Love can carry me though.

I must trust that love will find it’s way into my cracks and crevices, to make me stronger, as rusted and ragged as I currently feel.

Like one of my best Friends Rex writes of those hard times, they lead to a rich life, with love, heartache, the good, bad and ugly. But it is real and it is what life is all about. And I would rather take a chance at loving someone and live a life of those missed opportunities, even when it doesn’t work, than be so closed up and untrusting, that I miss the greatest loves of my life. For that is no life at all.

And when you love someone, you allow them their days and their faults. I have seen this with my own parents, married 45 years in November, There have been times when my father was angry, and lashed out at my mother, and vise-versa. When you love, you absorb those faults as if they are your own, because you love. You give, you take, you absorb, you love. You don’t get scared because some views or opinions are different than yours. If everything was the same, it would be very boring. And if it is that shallow, then it is not love at all. For love is deep.

As long as the core values are the same – family, faith, partnerships, morals, integrity – then that is half the battle. The other half is finding someone who will accept you faults and who you do not mind “taking a beating from” as Aaron Manley Smith says. Because you are open to love and getting hurt is part of it. If you are open to the joy, then you must be open to the pain. It is as it must be, there is not one without the other. No one is perfect. We all have bad days, we all get into fights, we all have doubts, some days more than others.

And on those other days, it must be love that carries us through. Love for ourselves, love for another, love for friends, love for family, love for children

And we carry that love in our hearts and in our soul:

i carry your heart with me

By e e cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Question: Mercy, Compassion, Grace and Forgiveness

Rex, one of my best friends asked me a question:

“Have you ever had a man love you enough to  hold you while you beat up on him because you were more important to him than his ego?”

My Answer: Yes.

.
The question was so raw in it’s honestly it stopped me in my tracks. And I started to cry. It was almost 20 years ago, but that question brought everything back like I was right there in it.

His name was David. I was 19.

I asked Rex later why he asked that question, he said: “It’s one of the 3 or 4 lowest points and/or most charged-up situations in any relationship run into. Without those turning points no relationship turns real, it just stays cursory.”

There is a time in my life I call “The Dark Ages,” and it lasted from age 19-21.  Terrible things happened during that time. No one knows everything that happened. I have never told. And I never will. Somethings just hurt too much to ever tell another.

David was my angel. He held me as I sobbed for hours, weeks, as I sobbed for months, even over a year. I sobbed for everything I had lost, all of myself that I could never get back. I wept for my heart, how it was so broken, I was broken, from the inside out. I had to look up to see rock bottom.  That was during the time I would drive 1,000 miles a day, just to be moving. I couldn’t be still because everything horrible would catch up with me.

I put that man through every kind of Hell imaginable. I yelled, lied, was so mean, wishy-washy, temperamental, distrusting. I never cheated, but I did treat him horrible. I put him through the ringer emotionally.

And he was there for me the whole time. He held me through it all, telling me it was going to be OK. He knew, whatever it was that hurt me so, I had to get it out.  He took my anger, pain, loss, confusion, loss of faith, disillusionment, emptiness, distrust, meanness….turned it into love, and gave it back to me.

That is Grace. And that is what I have prayed to have. It is not easy. Because you do have to care less for your ego than anything else. And sometimes, you do get beat up, quite a bit.

I thank David, to this day. I can never pay him back for what he did for me. His kindness, his wisdom, his Mercy, his Grace, saved my life. I cannot repay the debt, but I can pay forward.

Mercy Street, by Peter Gabriel is what he gave me:

Response: Your Awakening

A While ago, I posted a blog entitled Your Awakening. It was an amazing piece. My very good friend Rex also read it, many years ago and sent this response to me. And I thought I should share. Thank you again so much, dear friend.
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Maybe.
I see it this way: from a guy who has pissed away more great chances in a week than most men will see in a year: I’ve been allowed to see incomprehensible scenery connected to a brain that “gets it”.
Without those missed chances I would have: never been able to speak of the pain of an aborted father in the throes of post-regret, nor spoken to others who are bleeding the same way. Never known the kind of fervor and spit and fire it takes to speak my mind into a howling wind and actually made it slice through.
Never known the dubious pleasure of bringing down a pseudo-Napoleon living as king of his particular hill in a school system I pay for.
Never heard the voice of a now-relieved-son thanking me for helping his invalid grandmother out of a winter storm
Never had the ocean-powered wave of gratitude wash over me when I, alone, stood with one, wrongly accused, against a courtroom full of antagonists. (Not-guilty, by the way)
Never known the sheer power of being the one in the fray who is COMMITTED.
Never been able to speak of true, unrequited, ripped-apart love to an adolescent who’s going through the same thing.
Never known the joy of vocally and VERY audibly cheering a teenager when they finally excelled at something and got their due for it.
Never seen the pain in a true friend’s eyes when they buried their youngest. Never been able to hold them and let them cry the way they would only in a true friend’s arms.
Never been blessed to help bear the pain of someone you love on any level.
Never felt so dirty and ashamed as to chase even my closest friends off.
Never felt the heat of a South Georgia summer.
Or the cold of a Kentucky ice storm.
Or the power of an Alabama thunderstorm.
Or the thundering beauty of a Mississippi sunset.
Or the caress of a Tennessee mountain morning.
Or the complete release of a hearty and block-shattering “KISS MY ASS” to authority.
Or of watching the pain
the pleasure
the ecstacy
the victory
of discovery.
Would never had heard the crowd’s approval swell like a big gentle wave in the warm Gulf.
Or my new bride, taking such care to dress in some kind of frilly underpinnings complete with garters and white stockings say, “…do you mind if we don’t”, on my wedding night.
Not a bit. I just drove three hours through nowhere, Mississippi to say to the hotel clerk, “I’ve waited 31 years to say this: I just got married, and I need a room.” I was tired. Be real.
I would have missed words like, “I do”, “You may take your planet home”, “Would you hand me the piano?”, “I want to try everything, tonight.”, and “Honey, wake up. Hannah Newton was killed last night in a car wreck. John was right behind her.”
Not all of these are pleasant or desirable but they are rich. A mosaic of life. If we didn’t like imperfection and character, photographs would far outsell paintings. It’s what we’re here for.
I would have missed the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd, and the cussing of the GM.
And I would have missed you and your smile.
Most of all.
Stop searching. It’s already there.

Guest Post – I am What I Am

A great writer, a great man, and a great friend – Rex. Another great guest post. Enjoy!!

I am What I Am

   I am the last person in America you can insult with impunity: I am white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant, male, straight, Southern, Democrat, second marriage with step kids, religious but not zealous, unrich, right-handed, smoker-drinker, hazel-eyed, graying hair, 30 pounds over “ideal” weight, meat-eating, non gun-toting, destroyer of the utopian future world we were all promised.

     Don’t believe me? Watch any on-screen news or entertainment: I’m rude, crude, backward, burping, ignorant, and arrogant about it.

     Don’t believe me? Rerun any of the Super Tuesday election news coverage and commentary pre, during, and post; commentaries included.

     Conclusion: we can’t do anything right.

     Well, new society dawning: make up your mind.

     Not long ago I entered a downtown Chattanooga building and held the door’s momentum at bay for a lady behind me. Very curtly she said, “I can open my own door, thank you.” And I was dismissed.

     Four doors down later on Market Street I did the same for a guy with a bunch of delivery boxes. “Thanks, man!”

     Given his youth, uniform and physique I’m he was quite capable of backing through the door, or for that matter removing it, by himself.

     Didn’t matter I did both for the same reason: I had the power to let the door’s momentum smack ‘em both. How self-absorbed would I have been if I had done so? Not cool.

     A few years later I was in a pizza place watching a Braves game on a Saturday afternoon; just one other guy, the bartender, a 35-ish lady at the other end of the bar, and me.

     Her, “Anyone know what time it is?

     Me,  “It’s 4:15.”

     Her, “Thank you, and no, it doesn’t mean you can buy me a drink.”

     Okay, I was in a foul mood; my girlfriend’s mother was visiting I was avoiding.

     Me,  “Ma’m, I can get three like you for a week’s paycheck on Governor’s Drive.”

     She huffed out but the bartender bought my next beer.

     Has it come to the point where we think everyone is out exclusively for their own gratification? That courtesy is just an iceberg tip on a hidden agenda? That no one has a right to be angry with you but you have a right to judge never having set one step in another’s shoes? That you don’t need to know their story because yours is all-encompassing?

     Retool. Gentlemen, we need to grow more backbone and less false bravado and oh-poor-me lifestyles. Oh, and learn when to bow out gracefully and know when to run.

     Belligerence is not strength and acceptance is not weakness.

     Female persons: make up your mind, willya?! You see fluid dynamics guys deal in absolutes. You want us sensitive then swoon over the lumberjack. You want us manly but we risk you seeing us as coarse.

     For my 1,632 square inches of the world here’s the deal: I drive a car which is two years from getting a “classic” tag (the AARP card of autos), I let God wash it if He wants to (rain). It gets me point A to point B. This is my home/apartment; I live here. I do not press my underwear, hell, I don’t wash them until I run out. Alicia can wash ‘em if she wants to if not, fine, too. I usually don’t do dishes until I am nearly out or cranking up to cook something elaborate. Now I have a dishwasher; a better place to store the dirties.

     I do not get ballet but recognize its place in art and culture and love the symphony. I love my music souvenirs, from the rock that held the door open for decades at Muscle Shoals Sound, to Mickey Buckins’ drumsticks, to the rubber band the Spinners gave me, to my autographed playbills and drumheads, to my “Casablanca” poster. Alicia gave me one whole room just for that stuff.

     I don’t stay coiffed or in late fashion or design: jeans (from JCP or Walmart), T-shirt (right now mine says, “Huntsville est. 1805”), and open Hawaiian shirts. I keep facial hair because Alicia likes it and so do I (even though it’s harder to shave now than with no beard). I am untattooed and unpierced but my scars speak for me.”The look”, fashion, and pop psychology, like ear candles, come and go. Real is forever and easily maintained. Just because your feathers are ruffled don’t make you Christ-on-the-Cross.

     Enough. I am what I am. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

     So come down off your cross, leave it in the “might access later” file, resurrect, and go have a little fun.

     In the meantime stop building crosses; you’re runnin’ out of people to help carry them.