You wake up to Real-
ize a year passed along
With a thousand of us

On the beginning of the trip, the saturation and difference is the most remarkable with persons in contexts and contexts in persons.  That is to say: take a speck of red paint from a wall and transplant it to a wall that’s all blues and greens and it’s awfuleasy to observe the difference of the speck.

So send that little red speck in some white Explorer one Friday and at the first it’s difficult to see that anything’s different.  When after one weekend, it can seem that everything is, where forgetfulness is blending and the remembering is sharing.

The inverse is true, too. The greens and the blues of the humid country can see the red city hues, silent declarations of demarcations and the unmentioned mysterious, while the perceptions are equal from each of the other.

It’s a remarkable thing, and what it takes is no more than a few miles south of the city, though even more apparent some 200 miles east in a city still unexplored.

So I spun my tires exactly that direction, the drive no less similar to my drives north to Arkansas than the 10-digit difference between interstates 30 and 20.  Cedars hang over the asphalt, humidity steaming up and fogging the windows where the temperature of the air conditioner doesn’t match the exterior’s.

Gain a little more road on into East Texas and you begin to see some hills and bridges and unoccupied territories made of mossy pines and muddy riverbanks and the mother Mississippi, not too far east of there. And the clear traditions of the Second Great Awakening and some Southern drawl steeping its inhabitants can be painfully endearing if only for a shorter bit.

Throw in some darts and some American Honey in a coffee mug on the cobblestone edge of a midnight pool, and the distance seems to license one to be lost in passion and emotion without apology, some adolescent adults aloof responsibility with good reason — to be in order to be.

And much like it was once in some younger Arkansas summer, the welling in our stomachs is intense and spirals, and we can begin to understand, both comparable and contrastable from the most comfortable of contexts, the persons we most truly are to become.

B. Arkansas is a wonderful place with wonderful people.

C. Therefore, Lousiana is a wonderful place with wonderful people.

Today was like any other.  I found my running shorts (which I hope none of my friends should ever have to see) a tanktop, and those running shoes which are so graciously buoyant on a great variety of surfaces.

After suiting up, I set out for Westshore Drive — which ultimately leads past a few stop signs to White Rock Road and then Lawther — the famous road which circles White Rock Lake and plays host to some of the most expensive homes in Dallas.  But of course that’s not the matter.

Just beneath the willow tree I began my run on towards the spillway, which, indifferent to my changing and growing person remains as constant as I remember it in the late winter months of 2007.

My strides are becoming more confident, my breathing more consistent, and my resilience ever-increasing. Since I don’t run with my head between an iPod, I’ve developed in the past three years all sorts of little games to keep me occupied while my mind explores things deeper, systematizing what might and leaving afloat what shouldn’t.

The most common among these includes one aural — namely on the sometimes symmetrical connection between breathing and steps taking, and I think this particular game will perhaps never be loosed if only for the short-term focus it provides.  (Another which involves the specific numbering of steps between each division of the concrete barrier above the spillway is a less-practiced type, but no less helpful to the fulfillment of specific goals.)

Recently, a few rowing teams from a few select private schools have been paddling and pacing along the side of the spillway during my afternoon runs, and on top of my once-established rhythms of breathing and counting steps has been superceded by a race with those in the water.  Much of why I’m able to keep up or even consider it a race is that they are a bit far off and the distance provides the illusion that our speed is comparable, though I know theirs is much greater.

It’s 100º today, and I’ve mustered the courage to continue in the discipline regardless of the heat (while taking special measures towards to find the equilibriums among hydration and rest.  Of course I shower more often too, but that’s beside the point, I think).

Each lap on the top of the spillway is somewhere between 3/10 of a mile and 1/3 of a mile, and so I usually round up in this regard, which essentially means I allow myself to believe 3/10 is an equal portion to 1/3.  I’m able to justify such an allocation due to the fact that the wind is at my back on the first lap of each round and blowing fiercely at my front the second lap of each.

Finishing sweaty and not a little red from the Texas sun, I walk through the only place in the path around White Rock Lake that seems a maze, and carry on up the hill, where my car is parked in the grass, perhaps too close to the fire hydrant.  Of course any rules I’d be breaking would never be enforced by the security guard on duty who is mostly concerned with guarding his own air-conditioned comfort.

The drive back is about 4 minutes.  I’ll usually reward myself after a long run — and especially as we come deeper into the summer heat — with some sort of chilled drink on the trip home.  Ultimately I’ll return to Vickery some 45 minutes after I originally left, covered in saltsweat and a certain sense of accomplishment.  The first thing I do when I step into my apartment is make an effort to reach the shower.

Trying to remove the layer covering my torso, each day I recall that the very thing which makes the removal of the piece from my body so urgent is the very thing which keeps it still so fastened and snug.

After living in LA and playing shows across America in theater venues and dive bars, I wonder about what sort of change it might have been for them to be playing outdoors on a Sunday afternoon surrounded by flowers, a sunset just over the lake, and a great number of children occupying what System of a Down fans might call a pit.

I found a few images from the day and wanted to have them somewhere on the web as a reference point for the memories they['ll] embody.

Before the Arboretum trip, my very very good friend John Daniel was in town one last time before he moved all the way to Chicago.  We souped up a French Press of Italian Roast for his drive north to Russelville, AR, the place from where he’d depart for grad school the next day.  These, I think, are the only photographs I’ve ever published of Vickery on thispresentsojourn.  Welcome.

After the farewells, I headed on to the Arboretum.

Shaun doing biz.

Can’t remember what he was doing here, but it definitely didn’t involve biz.

The majority of the audience for the show:

We relocated when we heard Eric was on his way:

Turns out Shaun (pictured above) had bottle openers on the bottom of his sandals.  Pictured below is Eric successfully removing the bottlecap from a Corona Light with Shaun’s shoe.

If anything, I can affirm now that Ryan Adams’ Demolition is a dangerous listen, and to add within a related framework if any a time to feel human this is that. Until writing fully about this next, I’ll rise with the Dawn, hand off a guitar amplifier through which six years of music has passed — the meaning of this transaction something gargantuan, and my time with dear friends at the lake only serve to reinforce this very transition has been inaugurated but of course has not fully come to pass.

Another year, and I am the child my mother is nursing, and I am the sixth-grade child whose baseball games my dad never missed once, and I am the high school child who wishes to be anywhere close as cool as his older sister, and I am the college child (child, child, child!) with a girlfriend I’d obviously marry, and I am the intentionally single child living in the Upper East Side of New York City, and more fully of all I am the child who returned from a remote East Texan lake with sunkilled shins, laying in a bed at the city-center with the whole of each of these parts combined for seeing. And I am the man in forty-two years who will more truly be yet will not most truly be.  This is the land of “yet” and “not fully,” and I know this isn’t my residence if in terms of permanency.

Lake-lays tend to do terrible things to a person, which is our hope.  And of course I can’t agree more that we are being created by being destroyed.  None of this is at all negative if above the narrative, which we really aren’t.

When the task was complete, the only thing between me and my exit was the need for the trenchcoat which hung in the closet across the room, still knowing both it wasn’t really cold enough for this heavy a coat but — with priorities in view — that there is no other piece of clothing that would pair so amicably with my demeanor.

I flung the coat off its hanger, swung it around by the collar to my back and slid in carefully each of my arms. I began to fasten the buttons which ran a vertical line down the center of my body, beginning at my chest and descending to a far point below my waist. [It's my preference that the collar button of any jacket must always be fastened despite whatever fashion advice, for I adore the comforting sensation of cloth fastened tightly to the flesh of my neck.]

For good measure, I raised the collar like one might in the misty, indigo streets of a Film Noir, and felt the edges of the cloth play with the bristles on my jaw.

Now fully clothed in my winter true, I set out through the front doors of the house, contemplating how no more than year ago I thought I’ll never last here. I passed down the dark center hallway of the antique building and carried on into the entryway, a place with walls and walls of mailboxes. Unable to recognize most of the names above each one, I’m reminded of the transience of neighbors in the city and resolve — this is okay.

+

In the fall, when I had more nights like this one, I spent the greater majority of my time with Robert Frost or William Carlos Williams (or even Ted Hughes if I’m feeling a bit more stolid and staunch) alongside a Russian Imperial stout, but tonight wouldn’t be one of them. I headed on down the street whose only sound was the bzzzzz of my next-door-neighbor’s front porch insect killer and the clicking of my heels across the pavement.

Daylight Savings Time still has not arrived, though the sun had been staying up later than when deeper in the Winter months. I still much prefer the dark closer to lunch than to bed, especially if it leaves more occasion for these sorts of evenings.

I snapped my bookbag across my chest, not for support but rather for the snug sensation across my chest, and walked on down the block on towards Greenville Avenue. Taking a right in the alleyway just before I reach the famous, elderly street, I curve on the path towards the Dubliner. In late fall, the Dubliner had become my Monday evening office, first because its happy hour extends until closing time and for another it is typically fairly empty the night after the weekend’s death.

+

A split of the Celtic stained-glass doors in in the pub front, a wave at that guy I’d met last summer when the Rangers lost to the Yankees, and a right across the cigarette stained hardwood floors, I carried on down the railroad-car room.

There’s a certain station I call my own. It’s highly likely this spot will always be vacant, mostly because it’s the most dimly lit corner of all and I am drawn to all ilks of dim corners, not least for the way it allows one to observe all the surrounding activity, but also because the space is amenable to thought and to uninterrupted focus, should it be needed [which it usually is].

I unfastened my bookbag from my shoulders and chest, and lay it gently across the the small table which stood proudly in the Eire tradition. Unwrapping my coat is more a task than originally wrapping it, since the newness of the thing has tarnished a bit. But the process must be initiated sometime, especially since it’s no less than 60º out and even warmer in.

Detaching one at a time each of the large, black buttons in a vertical line down my body, I begin again with the chest and descend towards the bottom loop which sits hangs below my waist. And as I always do, I pulled off the coat from first my left arm and last my right, gripping the collar material between my forefinger and thumb. Swinging it around with less imagination or vigor or mystique than before, I lay it over the back of my chair, imagining it to be the fragile shoulders of my delicate wife.

And before the inauguration of a the finest tap-drawn Brooklyn Lager in the city and the text editor on my computer, only three important things were missing outside these two.

“What to type! The world is before me.” I thought it to myself.

I reasoned to let my fingers begin, knowing that my mind would follow [It's another thing to believe it actually works in that order.] I entered a “+” as a title, knowing the content of the thing should precede the naming of the thing.

I began in on my thoughts on this first day after Lent, this third day after the Great Sabbath, and this thirteenth day past my return from planning some future.

As of June 5, 2008, I am officially submitting my resignation from the role of Art Director for Lake Pointe Church, effective August 1, 2008. I’ve arrived at this decision after months of careful contemplation and prayer, and it’s with gladness I can say the Spirit of God is leading me on to pursue with greater focus photography, music, and various avenues of writing.

My loyalty runs deep for Lake Pointe, and the Communications Team with whom I have developed such a strong bond transcends the traditional definition of “workplace” relationships. I think that is a miracle possible only by the Spirit’s work of Unity in Christ.

So, although it is with grief that I look upon my leaving, it is with great joy that I look towards the opportunities the Father continually provides for me to proclaim the coming Kingdom of His Son through the arts.

Grace, Peace, and Love.

Wednesday, Or My Blood Pressure Rose

Not in all cases, but definitely in this one; A year is a long, long, long time.

Anywho, this is a design principle I very regularly follow, and is actually a line of thought which has interesting implications on Ethics in general, but I’ll save that.

Some weekend’s worth-of-work later, I escaped finally, the Right bookend to descend into a rest on patio by a pit of fire, in came the dandelion dust with what was at best the warm we wished in Winter’s deepest.  So a sneeze then carry on, a knitting, some weaving together in love later. Seems a mini-mexican drinks make malleable the callous - might moisturize the cracks; should stir up the stolid, Really reveal the Hidden, and conjure up consciousness forms deep below some seen skin and the hardly heard. Could it be that I can’t remember what is most real or that I choose to remember what I wish wasn’t?  Surely there’s a movie to match this (meaning I am sure. Maybe).  This may be the best way to know what it is to be made man.

Another one day of shooting tomorrow, followed by a much-necessary retreat on the woodened patio of the parents, circling an iron firepit.  An old-fashioned sleepover and shabbat, and He saw that it was Good.

Returning to my summers’ prior running discipline, I spend an hour a day just above the sleepest slope I know in Dallas — a concrete path equal in height to the top of the deepest forest I know in Dallas.

It’s a network of sunset-lit trails and paths leading to places yet unseen. There’s nothing esoteric about any of this writing.  I’ve just recently discovered this area after a multiplicity of years jogging and an occasional karoking on the concrete-laid-way above.  And now after only few hours exploring earlier and photographing a band later this afternoon has, well, increased the curiosity to a summit.

White Rock is a place I connect with solitude and with silence, and yet! in the past year it has transformed into something much richer as shared.  What is this year, wonder what next year will, well, see. But a docklay never lets down, it continues to be confirmed.