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On Saturday my boss and I drove across the river to the sad sad state of Illinois. We met an artist, did this and that, and had a few beers. Driving through steel towns so sleepy ugly flat it’d take a Wichitan to see something special, my east-coast boss looked at me and said “it sure is something to see.” I agreed in a fashion that surprised him, in way he might’ve expected. “Yeah I love it out here, I reserve Illinois for drives that are quiet, or sad.” He nodded his head and curled a half grin. “You a, you’re sort of a voluntary loner huh?” Sure, I thought, if that’s what it’s called.

In the summer of 1992, my family in full took to the Black Hills of South Dakota, where fool’s gold still sells hot and Hollidomes keep each other company. Past all that, in the deeper hills, far from Rushmore, there runs a river with trout through evergreens and quiet places. In celebration of Lucille’s willingness to somehow, some way, stay by my dad’s dad’s side for fifty years, on the arid ranch no less, we picnicked and scampered by that cold clear river.

Though moments and memories from that reunion blink and run, I can remember one hour with crystal vision. From one moment to the next, our picnic turned from a sun-streamed firmament to cold darting sprinkles that promise a hard summer rain fast coming. The subfamilies were scattered, and the countless giggling testaments to an old couple’s abiding and fertile love dashed and jumped inside an assortment of mini-vans. We threw ourselves inside and rolled the old sliding door shut.

Quiet and obedient kid that I was, I found myself in the back of my parents’ van. Sitting ahead were two of my sisters, my older cousin Peter, my dad and my aunt Bettie Lou. Peter had dark brown skin and was both older and taller than all the other children. I didn’t understand this, but I didn’t ask. In my entire life, I never saw him much. My young memory of him is that he was both agreeable and happily kind.

The vanity plates on either side of our American outfit called our ride the Bingvan, and painfully, so did we. As the Bingvan gathered speed, and we dove into the curving black ribbon through the steep forest hills, the rain came hard and speaking, like something from the bible or my dreams. One of my sisters petitioned my father for the playing of a tape, and in seconds all six of us were listening without complaint to a dubbed tape with the word Enya on it twice. Twelve eyes fixed on the mighty outdoors rushing.

My custom then, as an eternally willing passenger, was to lean my forehead out to the window’s surface and let my big skull rattle. That way I could see the passing wonder without any vision or thought of the vessel that took me on. I could act as though I was wind or a presence I can’t name. It was, and always has been an imagination fed by eyes open, not closed. I hope by seeing. I draw by watching. I pray by looking.

In that magic wet moment, doused in white rain and an early-nineties Enya drumtrack, I am certain that for once each person around me knew the glory I was always looking for. We were each quiet, even Rachelle, even Bettie Lou. When a loud and twitching thunderclap begged us to speak Peter opened his mouth first, slow and with belief.

“It’s so great.”

For the first time, I turned my head inward to see him and the others. It is for that moment alone that I appreciate the stranger that is my adopted cousin Peter. It is for that moment alone, that I remember him. Each of the others, even the old folks up front had smiles and slow nods with nothing to add. We were just kids, and we knew it. But for that long moment we were old souls, young and smiling. I wanted to laugh and cry at once, to make music with my chest.

Tonight, for the second night in a row, I drove to Illinois to watch the sky turn from pink to midnight. Through towns called Bellevue and Waterloo, where the trees tower above the empty spaces, black and abundant. I used to listen to music, to massage my head toward the road. But now I’ve taken to the noise of nothing but the small incessant rattles of an aging car just going. To let the ride be the quietest event it can be, while still racing through darkened fields. It is no silence, but it must be like the flapping solitude a high bird finds flying.

Tonight I leaned the side of my head toward the window in an aching search for that Black Hills moment. Each time I crawl inside something that moves I am searching for that moment. In my sleep I want the feeling. In these words I want it channeled. My heart breaks each day for that cheesy gorgeous moment I can only find in pieces. Among other things, I told it again, slow like the first time. Maybe even slower, maybe with a tear. It’s just so great.

On my way to the desert, I stopped for a day to surprise my mother on Mother’s Day. This worked out well for me because she bought me tuna and new shoes. On a drive across town, on our way to the tuna and shoes, she turned toward me with a serious, confessional eye.

“Bubby, I need your help. Every time my phone rings it does that song that’s all like dit ditta dit dim bum dit beep – hell-o-moto and it just embarrasses me to death. All of my friends look at me and think I’m just a crazy nincompoop.”

“Really Mother? I’ve always sort of liked the hell-o-moto song. It has a real I’m ok with Japan kind of vibe you know?

“No, I do not like it. Please change my ring tone.”

“OK, let’s change your ring tone.”

From there I went through the list of tones available on her phone. By this time we were each sitting in the parking lot of Sam’s, doors each open, listening intently to ring tones. They each sounded like some variation of smooth lounge jazz played with a miniature kazoo. She rejected each one, with the esteemed taste she has become known for.

“You’re going to have to buy one online Mother. We have to go hi-fi.”

“Are they worth it? How expensive.”

“About three dollars. Yes they are worth it, today’s phones have the capability of playing the finest music recorded. Their speakers are opera-house quality. There are so many great ditties available online that the real question is why, and how, would you not have a hi-fi ring tone. If you want your friends to take you seriously, it’s a must.”

I began browsing through the music I thought she might like. I was scrolling through the Christian Rock section of her phone’s online browser when she said “Alright then, get me something cool.” So I stopped scrolling through the Christian Rock section. “Just pick something that makes you think of me, I trust you.”

So I did. I searched the entire time we were at Sam’s and for several hours afterward. In fact, it took me most of the time I was home to find the perfect hi-fi ring tone. As I left for the desert, I was noticeably drowsy because I had been up half the night finding that tone. But the search, the long journey, the inestimable wait is worth it. As my mother can attest.

A few days ago, I called my mother. Because I love her of course and because I needed some things. And right when she answered she said, with abrupt surprise and suspicion, “Hey, what did you put on my phone. Every time my phone rings my son-in-law just turns bright red and laughs.” This news was troubling. Had I picked the wrong song? Had I gone through all that trouble for an errant fate? Had I spent those three dollars on a song she didn’t want to hear? No. I held firm, I made the right decision. She would love it eventually. Someday, she would see.

“That song happens to be AC/DC’s finest cut, Mother. My brother-in-law only chuckles because your surprising aura and clear knowledge of 80’s rock leaves him nervous and giddy.”

“Thanks a lot bub. I knew you’d do this. You must think you’re pretty funny.”

There was a long, apologetic pause in which I smiled like a devil and tried my best to sound as if I genuinely thought she’d like it. I do think it’s right for her. My mom’s got attitude folks, and style. She walks into a room and if some serious metal riff isn’t playing through your head you’re probably looking at the wrong woman. After a moment or two, I asked her if she planned to keep it. “Well yeah, I’ve got a sense of humor.” My mother, she’s alright. I love her for simple reasons.

Nobody surely doubts that he lives and remembers and understands and wills and thinks and knows and judges. At least, even if he doubts, he lives. If he doubts, he thinks. If he doubts, he knows he does not know. If he doubts, he judges he ought not to give a hasty ascent. I love this being and this knowing. Where these truths are concerned, I need not quail before the academicians when they say “What if you should be mistaken?” Well, if I’m mistaken, I exist.

St Augustine, City of God

Doubt is a strange thing. It evokes both respect and disdain. I often wish I could be washed of its stains. At times when doubt serves only pain, I ask bent and bowing that it be stricken from the record of my insides and I hope with a fervor that I could be saved from its power. And yet, when I see doubt hovering over the minds of others, even those I love, it’s a trait I find no difficulty admiring. To accept no fact or fate, to ask each question and doubt each answer, is a dangerous, demanding, and admirable way to live and think. A world without doubt would either be righteous in ways we cannot understand or desperately bland. Doubt gives us the chance to believe instead of know. To be certain through tribulation, rather than naivety. To go, instead of stay.

Yet doubt calls for consistency in a way its opposite does not. If one finds it necessary to turn the page back, she truly ought turn to chapter one. Doubt is a gauntlet of backwards equations that can never be solved, yet with each step truth demands that a further step be taken. This awful riddle is the first reason among many that I am no scientist or saint. The one who doubts and doubts truly, whether he is doubting a proof, a pamphlet, or the reality of love, must doubt to a degree that harkens eternity in reverse.

Doubt, a mechanism some must employ despite scoffs and insult, is a brave choice. Some read of Thomas and shake their heads for his idiocy, his unbelief, his weakness. But he didn’t turn away, he didn’t laugh and walk another direction. He stuck his finger in there and touched what he could already see. What audacious courage. I doubt I would have the will to even lift my hand. Had he turned away, instead of embracing his elementary questions, he’d have proven himself nothing but a man of fright. It may be admired to turn the page backward instead of onward, to move in doubt instead of belief. But to turn away, to ignore the question altogether (as my lesser half is fond of doing) is to submit oneself to neither doubt nor faith, but fear.

Doubt is often quiet, and always lengthy, as it must be. To know if a wordless doubt has turned to irresponsible fear is a knowledge only the doubter can have, and an allegation no one can make. Because the greatest, most exemplary forms of doubt involve proofs that took (and still take) very long to prove.

Doubt gives us a chance. But only a chance, and not certain success. Like any inner tool, it can be used and misused. Well placed, and misplaced. Doubt can land us in heaps of either pride or humility, and we’ll be incapable of telling the difference. Unlike its opposite, doubt lives very near logic and is thus easy to defend. The doubter must only be willing to rewind his logic’s dance one step further than his listeners’, and if he can be so patient they will surely applaud (as will he). With the proper use of doubt, one can always be righter, but never truly Right. It is with cruel and unnecessarily patient doubt that I have won more arguments than I deserve.

The other half of doubt’s tough chance is to find what we ought to in its trials. To read two pages backward, so that we might skip two chapters ahead. To find that though tested and stripped, some inkling of belief still lives. A kernel of truth begs us forward. Doubt is redeemed in its opposite, in the one who looks both ways and crosses as taught, when little. Doubt gives us a chance, not an answer.

I’ve often wondered if a world without pain is a world without feeling. I cannot know, as it’s a logic that calls upon two unknowns. However a fact just as pretty sits before us each, and that is that a world without doubt is a world without faith. That we can claim for certain, as it’s an equation with intimate knowns that rely upon one another, scattering us each across a wide spectrum as doubters, believers, and both. We can hope that our thinking slides us to the proper end of the scales, we can doubt and be uncertain. Or we can doubt in circles, we can doubt without end or answer. To those strong souls that choose the latter, I offer genuine empathy for their despair. Not only will they have nothing to know, but nothing to believe, no one to properly love, no place to doggedly go.

If there is one secret truth I love, it is that hope waits on doubt, though doubt doesn’t know, or care. Faith waits on doubt, because doubt must work, while faith need only be.

Since the spring of 2002 I have had pain. And since late last year, I have had pain in earnest. I speak of course of a physical ailment, as it is one of life’s givens that I have always had pain, and we have always had it in earnest. And as my most loyal readers already know, I’ve always tried to live that pain with humor. Here where the story’s mine, it was no great struggle. Ambulance rides, CT scans, and operations are ready fodder for the lightly written word. It takes the edge off, to know that I could make someone else laugh.

But jokes aside, this four-year bout has been my first physical relationship with the frailty of our human vessel, and it certainly won’t be my last. And though it is easy to make paragraphs and allegory, I have had much less success in the world that is real, where a good story doesn’t make a good man.

By no means can a bit of pain excuse my shortcomings, as there is no use blaming internal failures on external difficulties. However I was not truly confronted until the first of May, when I stood up my dear friend Amy for two coffee dates straight, because I couldn’t sleep at night. I toyed with excuses and vague explanations, and she set me straight with one short missive. When you pretend that you are yourself even though it’s clear you’re not, I can’t help you and I don’t do myself any good either.

I had never stood anyone up, and the one time, long ago, that somebody stood me up meant more to me than she’ll ever know. You would think such a failure would have opened my eyes, but it still took being told to see the mess I made. Only then, by reading Amy’s words, and recognizing the true contribution my ailment had made to an already suffering character, could I refuse to accept any further excuses on pain’s behalf. From that day forward, with the operation still weeks away, my soul rediscovered honesty.

This morning I woke early to empty orange bottles and fleeting pain. The operation brought new pangs and discomfort as expected, but as the wounds have healed, I’ve finally felt the most brilliant physical sensation that any human can. It is the sensation of retreat. The hurt dries in its puddle, sinking below the line it kept for years. I tell you the truth, the absence of a long known pain is a better feeling than all the physical pleasures. And I tell you the truth, I cannot fathom that physical sensation’s inner equal. What a day that would be. To have my heart as well sewn as the sutures beneath my bandage.

With distance from something, be it suffering, a city, or anything else that entangles our existence, we can see it for what it really is. Up close a mountain may just as well be a cruel wall, but from the plains it’s a small thing among many with a thousand ways to climb it. Each path easier than the one we chose. They’re prettier from a distance too, we’ll see the gray blue peaks and forget the falls. But if we return, our patient appreciation for the slow climb is bold and new. We’ve seen the mountain from its dark canyons, and from the field. Now we know the mountain we wish to climb.

The pain I knew could have had a name, I was learning it so well. As it leaves me, and the distance from its reality grows, I quietly wonder if I should have hoped for its dismissal, like mountains from the fields. It gave me lessons, humility, and tears I’d have never known. Yes, I remember crying on my back on the bathroom floor. Of course I remember. Calling my dad late at night, embarrassed and nauseous. But I also remember people telling me of their own unique battles and being able to look them straight and say “I know.” I treasure those moments.

And so the next time some physical malady comes my way, I plan to do one thing different so that the summit might sooner be mine, no matter how long the pain chooses to stay. I’ll tell them where it hurts and when. I’ll tell the ones I love what I never could, cause it’s impossible to pretend. And maybe then, a good story, a good telling, will mean something real about women and men.

Last night, for the second night in a row, I took a long wasteful drive through the endless city bricks, gravel, and asphalt laid out in each direction but east. It is easier now, to sit instead of stand. And ever since I got back from my prayer to the West, I’ve had a need to nurse the blisters those roads gave my palms by driving even more. So my walks have become rides. Dangerous looks at the far horizon, like a horse in its circled corral, punching the dirt outward ever closer to the fence. Most of the time, it’s just a wish as I sit by the street and sip on something jolting. I take an errand across town and I want to keep on and on, past the daylight’s furthest reaches.

When I was a kid, I’d sit outside on days like this and look across the street at the first house I ever knew. The pavement was a dull gray. I’d eye it for minutes and with fingers outstretched I’d slowly lower my palm to its surface with numinous fear and longing. On contact I would hear it, and my veins would race with the wild knowledge that by this road my hand knew them all. I thought of cities and oceans and slums all connected, all webbed and one. They throbbed beneath my hand, and in my strange way I was touching everywhere. Too hot to touch long.

These recent drives took me to neighborhoods where racked with cautious prejudice I thought black men might kill me in the bright of day, and neighborhoods where white men might too, under the shameful cover of night. I belonged to no place. I have always taken these rides, since before I had keys of my own. I go to tide my wishes over, to nap my soul. It’s on those fast ribbons and slow stoned streets that I find the greater rhythm. It’s out there moving, that I see his heavens declaring. A silent music that is infinitely fast, unfathomably slow. And when I see it, out the side of my eyes, I can sometimes whisper in. Speaking softly of that which I lack, and all that’s missing from the picture.

The journeys a kid inside me dreams of are not these city drives I have taken. The night rides are like iron rations instead of paradise. But even long ago, little and beaming, I knew that I would never go to the furthest place without a reason. And only once, have I had one. Before I was even in to girls, I knew it was girl that would bring me. Even in its thrashing sorrow, that trip lived up to every inch of hype and cinema my young imagination gave it. Because once it began, and even in its sadder moments since, my unbelief was left cowering and defeated by the side of shrugging billboards in Utah.

Now grown, I rarely put my hand to the street, out of fear for what I’ll have to feel. Just like the box we keep of love’s old letters. In this sad age it’s a bloating e-mal inbox. Nonetheless, we cherish the thing, we save it cause we ought to, because on that unlikely distant day, we’d hate to have to say it’s gone forever. But rarely do we dare to know again what it stores. For me the road gives the same shudder in its tempting. An endless land of promise, with only longing on the way. We open the box because we miss those days. We read the words and miss them so much more.

In a tiny parking lot by a lighthouse, at a place called Point Reyes, after opening the road till it was finally swallowed by the sea, I dared once more bend toward the tarred gray grains. For the first time in years, now on a bad knee. My hand didn’t shake like a boy believing, and I knew the road wouldn’t be hot, because I had tamed the dream and turned myth into bland reality. The continent now knew my name, if anyone did. But the touch gave more feeling than I feared for. This road can take me home, I almost whispered. And on that road, those many roads, connected and unanimous, I was a boy alive with low love and wonder, knowing for certain that unlike the destination behind me, there is no one place, no end called home. It’s the way he whispers, in the highways. I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Over the last two days, an ever-expanding file of evidence points to one simple fact: I am getting old. My immaturity always kept me believing that I was also young. But now, just like my father, I must realize that I am still immature, but old.

The signs began to appear on Thursday night. I realized that the most exciting part of my day was one of two things. Either the new air-conditioner that had been installed, or the fact that it had a remote. I couldn’t decide which. That night, I watched the National Spelling Bee, I almost cried for the loser. I was then all primed and ready for Diane Sawyer’s hour-long special about the American Foster Care system and I cried three times, the first time only fifteen seconds in. Those poor kids. I had macaroni and Jello for dinner.

I didn’t take notice of these developments until about ten o’clock, when I realized I needed to stop drinking my orange juice, because I wasn’t to eat or drink anything until after my surgery on Friday. That is when it hit me. “There is something wrong with me,” I philosophized, “I am aging at an exponential rate.”

The next morning I was up at 4.45, just like every old person. It was the twoth of June, and I was going under the knife. So off I went to the hospital for my procedure, where I would be even more alarmed by my emerging persona. I have had anesthesia twice before, and both times I was told that I acted silly. This time however, senile may be the more appropriate description. And by no means do I mean to make fun of senility, as it is often a sad affair. It was certainly bittersweet in my case, as a nice, older black nurse by the name of Georgia questioned me as I came to.

Georgia had a sweet smile and old-people glasses. “Well hello Robert, is there anyone coming for you?” Slowly, I sighed an answer. “I wish she was. I wish she was here.” I began to drool.

“Do you have a wife?”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh so she’s your sweetheart?”
“Yes.” Reality slowly reminded me of the date. “Except she doesn’t like me and she’s not here.”
“Oh, I see.” Georgia was troubled.

“Do you like Ray Charles Georgia?” Georgia said nothing.
“I sure like Ray Charles.”

Georgia then giggled to herself, and wheeled me off to the bathroom where I couldn’t pee. She said I couldn’t leave until I showed her I could pee and my sweetheart showed up. In my mind this was a grave problem. On our second attempt in the restroom I realized it was because she was standing there, and I didn’t know why she kept turning on the faucet. Now I only needed a ride.

Around then, my friend Amy showed up, whom I had asked to cart me home weeks ago. She was on time, but Georgia gave her a stern look, which I believe was based upon our recent conversation. We drove home and I apologized for so many things that Amy had to say “Stop apologizing.” I got sick two blocks from my house. We got me out and I sprawled across the cool morning concrete. I lifted up my shirt and said “Amy look,” so that she could see all of the weird plugs that were still on me. When I finally took them off, they made a noise like sucking.

Since then, I have been sleeping, resting, taking narcotics, and eating softy jelloey things. I have read two books and watched several movies. They say I must wait at least three days before I have sex, and a whole week until I can go horseback riding. I have occasionally gotten up and stumbled about my small apartment, only to return, unsure of my original intentions. This morning, in a gesture toward God to accept my fate as an Old Person, I got out a list, and prayed by name for each of my future grandchildren, in advance.

Gosh today I had a great, genius, future-famous-artist sort of thought. Well, no. But great. Saw a girl in the aisle with all the sauces and drinks, I was looking for the soy and wouldn’t find it for another twenty minutes. Attractive, yes, but this isn’t that kind of story. Besides, she was wearing all black and looking at the red wine. She looked at the rows with that face you might make if you thought you could pull off such a face. She read the bottles as if she knew each taste, and she only needed to decide which swank bottle was perfect for tonight. Please.

And there, after talking to nary a soul all day, the thought hit me. Why is everyone so serious all the time? Blame me too, but really, why do girls have to stand like that, all contrapposto, fist to the hip with her little cart neatly parked as she secretly looks for that one bottle she’s had a dozen times before with her “flatmates.” Arbor Mist’s over here honey. And it’s not just a girl thing, it’s a people thing. A guy standing in the meat aisle eyes the butcher and slowly taps two fingers to his sober lips, as if he even knows the difference between flank and sirloin. Really.

Now people are serious like this everywhere. Gas station, bank, stop light. There’s good reason, we’re all just trying to get through the day, to get home or whatever. But such seriousness, such drab mechanics, this passive meanness we all employ in the grocery store is a real sad thing. Why? I’ll tell you why. For some crazy reason, possibly to do with the fact that today, my air-conditioner hates me, I lost to myself in five games of pool, and I really hadn’t had enough fun, I wanted to do something special to that girl standing by me in the saucy aisle. I wanted to pick up that pound of steak already in my cart, unwrap it from its white paper, all bloody sticky red, and throw it at her. Just to hear that sound. Hopefully it would hit her in the face and then tumble down her black blouse, her rolled dark jeans, and her sandaled little feet. Then maybe I’d say something silly like “meat!” or “beef you woman!” Then I’d run off round the corner, just praying she’d be nipping at my heels with the mustard.

Folks the grocery store is full of food that isn’t ours, and we each only have one store we call our own. That leaves, like, thousands of stores to play in. There’s no excuse for our timid ways. Let’s, as a nation, stop beating our wives, stop shouting on the phone, and for God’s sake, stop calling one another those words we really don’t mean. We can each take it out on perfect strangers, and they’ll be raring to give it right back. There is a surplus of safe, colorful weapons waiting for us, and most of us are overweight. Let’s buy less. Let’s eat less. Let’s get kicked out.

Since my return I’ve taken five aimless and devoted walks. Each day the temperature would boil steady in the afternoon, my studio would turn me soggy and yet my badly conditioned apartment air was still far too warm to enjoy. There is truly no machine that can make the earth air new. So I’d journey the streets, content with the thick air sliding between my clothes, shining my brow, and plunging me beneath memories of humid summers past and former dreams of humid summers future. In a mid-continent swelter, I walked slow and smiled at a world that passes on and on, with or without me. It’s an okay thing.

I picked up a grocery list, a library slip, a medical release, and dozens of twigs and green blades. In each direction I went, watching the asphalt turn from a polished silver to a golden gleam to the most uncertain pink. Finally the sun would peak behind something tall and a breeze would tell me I could turn for home. Oddly enough, I found that the slower I walked, the better I felt about tomorrow. And yet if I simply stopped, to see the bursting urban bourns around me keep on churning, to watch the city see straight through me as if I never came, my heart would stretch and fall like the dough of a pizza pie just before it breaks. Barely moving I felt humble and hope. But with legs planted, I closed my eyes feeling heavy and late.

On the weekend, family arrived with affection and humor. We’d walk about here and there, making short lines through the muggy city I had so recently measured and surveyed. I made jokes and they laughed. My sisters brought along a doting sense of optimism I didn’t deserve to enjoy. I was glad for the momentary relief, though the many tomorrows stung beneath the words of each exchange. My mother put her palm to my cheek and looked at me with that face I can’t even bear. My father bought me a Maker’s Mark and smiled behind his Bailey’s.

It gave me great pleasure to see that finally, after so long, my own family walked too fast for me. Sisters with strollers and Dad with late-as-ever Mom, they each kept a pace just a knock faster than the one I liked to keep. Walking a step ahead, they’d look back and ask me about every kind of next, be it the hour or the year. No matter the question, the answer was up to everyone but me. And like the days of so many summers here in the middle, that fact burned but it was alright. To know nothing and know it well, it was almost heavenly with equal emphasis and a submissive, afternoon kind of ease.

My Sunday morning walk never started. Instead I rested as I really should. Not just in bed, but in their hearts, and in their eyes. We could plant our feet and smile, resting even in the slowness that only love and family brings. This life, this hot dream, has more questions than it does answers. And with those questions, I lie awake beneath the late loud hum of a leaking coolant and know that like a river, something certain still abides.