Wait…as I Ask You

wait…as I ask you

to understand my temperamental ways

as we pass by one another

amongst night winds

when desire should over power passion

and yet it does not…

stop pretending, we comprehend nothing more

than our own reality of mediocrity…

wait…as I ask you

to hold onto your passion

the very passions where we once

held each other in silence…

the very silence that seemed to fight

with night sounds as they passed through open windows

and enveloped our every moment

while our bodies became symbiotic in their desires…

wait…as I ask you

why we pass each other in silence

of our own misunderstandings

only to exist in moments of sadness

or persistent disbelief that we truly know the other

because silence fools us into believing

we have not lost what we no longer

are able to comprehend

wait…as I ask you

is it over between us

as we fail to comprehend the desires

we lost several summers ago

when the passions faded into the realities of the day?

the sheets tell us no lies

and the winds whisper nothing, but the words of today…

wait…as I ask you…
nothing further…

Said the Scribe...

...I learned more when you and I spoke of our children and their tribulations than I did when I remembered there was hatred against my ideas, ideals, and philosophies...
And Solomon responded, "Forgive me, son, we both learn more than we teach in our lifetimes."
To which the Scribe decided to seek out life and philosophy in the journey.

Said Solomon

Said Solomon to the Scribe, "Your silence has been too long."

To which the Scribe replied, “It has.”

“Why?”

“I lost my simplicity,” and then the Scribe wept into his hands upon saying these words.

“But, you can change this, too.”

“Will you help?”

And then Solomon embraced the Scribe, and assured him he would. The Scribe cried.

beneath me

oh man, the ground is below me...

and the sky is above, 

existing in some sort of complacency...

mediocrity.

is there nothing more than the wasted efforts of today?

she says nothing, 

other than I loved you once upon many years past...

figure it out...

she relents in silence...

speak!

oh man, the ground is below me...

EjG

Random Thought...

Thinking there are more miles than tread on the tires to travel them. Maybe exhaustion is just another form of the soul rebuking reality...

Violence and Grace

Scenes from Dismal Swamp...Take 1

Afterglow on a September Evening

A Thousand Words Worth

Figure the words have not been coming lately. Guess it's time to spark the creativity via the camera lens. Thanks Dan and Jen for the inspiration you may not realize you have given me...

...and maybe the words will come along with them at some point. But, for now Solomon and the Scribe are silent and the camera speaks.

EjG

tracks

time slips by, 

passing to infinity, 

as I watch my youngest 

walk carelessly 

down some desolate track. 

the train no longer travels 

upon these rusty rails, 

that era has ended 

in silence and whispers. 

a deafening silence 

spanning the Delaware, 

which continually divides 

the hills of Pennsylvania 

from the desolation of some company town 

forever stuck within New Jersey. 

today slips by, 

though a child knows no difference, 

and I contemplate existence, 

time, 

and the forevermore, 

screaming into the silence of my mind 

from a lack of understanding.

the late autumn winds rustle 

within today's desolation 

while leaves etch brown 

into the same landscape 

these damn tracks seek to divide. 

the souls of the silenced 

watch my every move 

and I wonder what they know, 

and have seen, 

for my soul 

has been deceived by the words 

of selected philosophers.

is this the end, 

the beginning, 

or some version of reality 

between a multiplicity of dimensions? 

I know nothing more than the madness 

within my own mind…tracks.

(inspired from a walk while taking photos of the landscape and my son on the railroad tracks just outside of Brainards, New Jersey)

My Americana / John

My Americana

within a summer’s wind
the corn waved its silence
as a distant train passed by
unnoticed,
yet it bellowed
to prevent trespassers
from crossing its path.
and there was a wonderment of eyes
that my sister and I had
as we sat upon
grandfather’s lap
counting its cars.
there was a also a simplicity
and a complexity
at the very same time.
everything was
just as it should be.
but today,
nothing is the same.
the realms of silence
tell us nothing more
than that which we hope to see,
comprehend,
and remember….

-------------------------

John

There are points in time that permanently fixate themselves within the depths of the mind, and yet bring themselves to the forefront of memory upon a single thought. Whether it is about a death or about a life, those thoughts are as vivid as the visuals in front of you today.

I passed a barren field yesterday; it had corn in it last season. And across the brown furrows, worn by winter’s edge and speckled with cut stalks, my memory brought forth a time within childhood. A time where I sat upon my grandfather’s lap, in his recovered, brown lazy boy chair next to the picture window looking over the cornfield next to his house. His chair was always a bit stale and musty. The footrest had a bottle of whiskey in it that he received at Christmas, and it took him to the following Christmas to finish it. A little snort once in a while was all.

Corn stalks waved firmly in the summer afternoon winds. And, this field stood for something, like my grandfather. A firm man, whose hands were too large for a wedding ring, and yet not overweight. He was a master plumber in a time that rewarded men for hard, honest work, not relegating it to near-do-wells and filling it with shame. He retired in his early forties, making money in real estate, even during the Great Depression. There was no shame in it.

He was not perfect; my grandmother was sure to tell you that a time or three. “Your grandfather,” she’d say in a voice that quivered from age, “only said ‘I do’ once in his life, and that was when we got married. Ever since then he says ‘you do.’”

And for some reason, unbeknownst to me as a child, my parents didn’t find it funny when we’d pass gas like my grandfather did.

He was famous for sleeping in his lazy boy, falling asleep somewhere around early evening, snoring to shake the rafters. Of which my grandmother would yell at him, because she could not hear the television or the conversation, “Johnny, roll over.”

Couple of snorts, a bit of harrumph, and he’d roll onto his side, fart, proclaim, “you did that,” and then go back to sleep. Of course my sister and I thought it was quite funny, and every once in a while you’d catch my parents smirk when they thought we were not looking. But, this lost its charm when we did it. My father would remind us of the disciplinarian my grandfather was when he was a younger man and shaping a family. He had to do this at one point in life.

Yet none of this silliness really mattered when it came to what was important and why cornfields are important. Or, why the simplicity and the straightforwardness of the countryside is what often shape a man.

I have spent much of my life, traveling the backcountry roads, to discover where America, life, simplicity, remembrance and God all intersect. It is a search for simplicity and understanding.

Yet, in the simplicity of youth, I had not realized my discovery might have happened years ago when sitting on the old gray wood farm wagon that rested beneath the 100-year-old maple tree in the back yard. The cornfields surrounded this, as well.
To this day, as if it was just yesterday and I was ten, I remember sitting next to my grandfather on this wagon, counting the number of train cars as they passed in the distance, the heat waves made them look wrinkled. There was nothing extraordinary about this, except the fact that we spoke about simple things and enjoyed simple aspects of living.

The barns across the quiet country road my grandparents lived on were filled with life as birds called to one another in the hot, late summer air of Michigan. You could smell the decomposing hay and dripping diesel when you got close to these structures. They etched the farmland with their fading red, weathered wood. Americana persisted here, or was at least struggling to hang on here, as time slowly peeled away the layers of strength these structures once held.

Americana persisted beneath the maple tree, too, as we threw rotten tomatoes in the field from his garden, or stuffed ourselves with grapes and raspberries from the vines and bushes that edged their property. And somehow I think that is why I now grow blueberries and have old barns that smell of decomposing hay because these all represent something: childhood and simplicity. My Americana.

But stories have an end and a beginning, all at the same time. He died in his lazy boy chair. Though memory is sometimes whitewashed; I think my mother told me he was lying on his side, like he always was when he’d roll over. That meant he was facing the cornfield…I think his soul waves within the stalks as they bow to the summer winds.

And I have walked amongst the stalks, in August, with my children. Hoping to remember, and hoping to pass along the same simplicity I received many years past.

The story begins once more.

EjG

systemization

"Gravedigger
when you dig my grave
would you make it shallow
so I can feel the rain…

Now you should never have to watch
your only own children lowered in the ground,
I mean
you should never have to bury your own babies.
Gravedigger…"

Willie Nelson
-------------------------------
systemization

there is an absence
created
from atrocities
we have instilled
within
our own madness…

it is our systemization…

we dig our own graves
through iniquities
of humanness
while our babies look through
frosted glass windows
of some institution
in hopes of freedom
from the madness
we have imparted
upon their souls
through our very own
ineptness

why?

‘cause we could not see the light
nor the brilliance
from the heavens…

is there not one soul
that can see
this madness of sins
we have bestowed
upon the next generation?

retribution and blame
are the only
answers for damnation…

my God
we want that damnation
to the point
we taste the sweetness
of its blood and desire…

there is no such thing
as compassion,
reason,
logic,
or forgiveness
when it comes to
systemization…

pray for our lost souls…

they are the next generation…

and when I am buried
may there be a heaven
where I can celebrate the freedom
from all this madness…

but now

the rains fall gently
upon my skin
within summer’s night
and yet
there is no comfort
to pass along
when our children
feel the vast nothingness of sadness
from our generation
failing to see
this pain and emptiness…

damnation…

the soul knows nothing further
and so we cry into the winds
passing by the windows
while watching the moon
at the midnight hour…

the silence deafens all…

my abyss

there is an abyss
upon where we watch our souls
writhe in contempt
within the here and now;
the dominant ridicule our existence
in an attempt to push us
into the complacency of the system.

a complacency
where we seek both armageddon and nirvana….
only to realize it is the mundane
and the neurotic
defining our souls,
and existence,
silence and echoes
vibrate through our damnation.

a wind blows in silence of our memories.

there is nothing more
than what exists today…

my skull pulls free
from the confines of the skin,
and I’m screaming for joy,
across a vastness of nothing,
to the point
I kiss the evermore.

the edge of infinity
defines my limitations,
there is nothing more
than the confines
of our dreams
and imaginations.

yet my soul is consumed
to the point
there is no recognition of being;
eternity becomes nothing more,
now,
than an abyss of the hereafter.

an abyss
where music
is the difference between sound
and silence.

someday
we all will die,
and there will be no more sound,
only silence…

of the abyss…

EjG

In Memory of My Son

***
Whether you lose a child through death or failure, the loss hurts just the same. I have lost my son, and very few understand, or know, the chasm of sadness existing within my chest and mind.

When there is no casket, there is no sign of loss. Only disgusted looks at you and your soul. Though there is more to the story than meets the eye, the armchair journalists, activists, and philosophers blame the father for the ailments…for surely the mother cannot be wrong, abusive, nor inattentive.

Let me be explicitly clear; loss from failure cuts to the soul even further than the loss from a death. Especially, when the failure comes from the system letting you down, actually working against you.

It was just days before Christmas 2007 that I lost my eldest child, through failure, not death. And both the uninformed and the arrogant point their fingers in my direction as the culprit of a great tragedy. Yet, the fight I gave to save, raise, and provide for him goes unnoticed.

His mother won the battle, our son lost his life.

No man should have to ever chose between saving his eldest child or saving his other two children and wife. Yet, we have to sometimes make those decisions. And the decision becomes difficult, logical, easy, blurred, and obvious all at the same time. But, I had to make that choice…philosophical dilemmas are both disgusting and vile when they occur in real life.

Legal decisions and discussions surrounding this are callous and clinical. The true emotion comes while driving home, alone, behind the wheel of an old red Dodge truck, tears making the oncoming traffic look double. A true man is not supposed to show emotion…I turn from others to hide my shame of sadness. The light turns green…I press the gas pedal more cautiously then other days.

People pass by unnoticed...

Joint legal custody means nothing more than the fact that the father has absolutely no right in making decisions for his child. It only makes him financially responsible for the inept decisions of others.

Say a prayer for my son…that’s all he has left at this time for his salvation and redemption.

A father is supposed to be emotionless…and yet the tears, sadness, and hopelessness overwhelm me during a time of year that is supposed to be filled with hope, joy, and renewal.

I lost my son December 19, 2007. End of story...

There was no memoriam. There was no funeral. There was no wake. Only an abyss of silence that deafens my soul…nothing more…

And the truth is? Silence has more echoes than sound ever had…

EjG

nocturnal

there is nothing more simple
nor more complex
than that which is found
within the mind
at the hours
past midnight
where upon the wine
and the whiskey
take hold of the mind
allowing both the beautiful
and the mundane
to become intertwined into
a quagmire of existence
while my guitars
sit on their stands
in silence
as the radio plays
some tune that becomes
an incantation for relief
from the mediocrity
we all somehow manage
to live with
inside our brains…

there is no true solidarity
nor true solemnity
when the mind
can no longer rest
because the remembrance
is as jaded as the reality.

ejg

sunday morning

sunday morning i chased a balloon
like a carefree child…

it was free,
we were free
following the wind and the sun,
just like a soul should be…

yet, as it landed,
holding my son’s hand,
we watched in awe
of something simple,
grand,
and beautiful…

life,
it is meant
to be like that balloon…

simple,
grand,
beautiful…

sometimes we forget this…

EjG

-----------

I asked Solomon, "How did I lose my simplicity and creativity?"

And he responded, "You have not lost it, only ignored it, like life. Stop ignoring it."

"How?" I asked.

Solomon responded, "Like the balloon, chase the wind. Remember the innocence and wonderment of your son as you both looked at the balloon. Become like a child and chase that which is simple and beautiful. Then, my dear friend, you'll have life, simplicity and creativity."

And so now, I start that chase. It's the crossroad once again. I like the crossroad. There are diferent paths to choose, all with excitement and life.

It's nice to smell the trees once again.

Echoes Beyond Midnight

Is it better to die young,
experiencing life to all of its excessiveness
possible,
or
to die old,
experiencing life in all its cautions and mediocrity?

Which is better?

To burn out from the excesses of humanness
or fade into the mediocrity
of day-to-day life?

Fear both life and death…
It has become the same continuum for us all.

One where there is both a possibility of an ever after
and a possibility of nothing
but pure silence.

The infinity of silence…

An abyss

A gamble we take…

Some days we feel alive and dead, all at the same time.
May our souls rest upon a sunset.

And may God find mercy on all of us,
the wealthy and the poor.
the powerful and the timid.
the Us and the Them….

The pain in my chest and my head are unforgiving…

It is relentless to the point of madness.

And, they are both more real than ever imagined.

EjG

----------

Both the Scribe and Solomon were silent. Unsure what they heard and not understanding what was meant to be understood. It was night. The abyss of silence was upon them.

Elizabethtown

There are very few movies that persuade me the way Elizabethtown has done. In my collection of movies to watch on a rainy day, I own Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, Bridges of Madison County, and now, soon to own, Elizabethtown.

The movies that touch me most have some relational aspect of them to either my experiences, loves, interests, or desires. Such as, I need that road trip taken out of Elizabethtown. We lose too much in our haste to attain some destination that we lose, or forget, or maybe overlook, that the journey tends to be more powerful and impactful than the destination.

In fact, I have done things similar to that final destination, though less grandiose, as that in this movie.

I remember bringing my future wife (now current wife) across the state, providing directions for her, and noting landmarks she would see along the country route. There are small things I remember, like the word “Creamery” in cement, on a brick building in Carson City, Michigan (which was covered up by some senseless individual). Or the farm with several tractors, believe they were John Deere’s, on the corner of Barry and Washington Road in central Michigan.

But, what Elizabethtown has given to me is the quote on failure. I have failed at many things, many times, even today, but I continue to press on and look for new ways of doing things, new ways of experiencing life, new ways of understanding this world we live within.

Failure is a non-achievement the conformists and the mundane love to force upon the non-traditionalist, with admiration. Whereas, we, the artists, love to see failure validate our non-conformist ways. Why? Because we know failures are merely steps to success.

In the corporate world, perfection without failure equals mediocrity and attainment of the status quo. Outside of that, those challenging the norm, who eventually succeed, see success greater than that imagined. Those who fail, either pick up and move on, settle for the security of the mundane and the mediocre, or pass silently away to obscurity through their own madness.

I may be close to the madness, at least my wrinkles prove this could be close, but I think one more road trip will bring out the true greatness that is present in all of us. One more trip to discover America, my soul, our essences, or just to discover life. And I wrote “life” without thinking about Elizabethtown, seriously, but that is how the movie ended. Discovering life. Let’s discover life!

Let’s run as fast we can down the road, any road, or path, to discover something new.

The rest can wait until later…

EjG

================================

From Elizabethtown...

Claire: So, you failed.

Drew: No, you don't get it.

Claire: All right, you really failed. You failed, you failed, you failed. You failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed….

You think I care about that?

I do understand.

You're an artist, man. Your job is to break through barriers.

Not accept blame and bow and say: "Thank you, I'm a loser, I'll go away now."

Oh "Phil's mean to me, wah, wah, wah..." So what?

Drew: I don't cry.

Claire: You want to be really great?

Then have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make ‘em wonder why you're still smiling.

That's true greatness to me.

Dungarees...

The other day I washed my favorite pair of jeans, by hand, so I could wear them, as they had already been well worn this week. It was just like some dungaree commercial, one you would think makes for a good commercial on TV, but may not really happen.

And I laughed, while no one was home, as the soap suds spilled over the sink, and from there being too much material to easily engage in this endeavor. But, life has become so mundane that wearing jeans last Friday was one way I could get at my simplicity, wanderings and creativity.

They represent the many miles traveled. They represent me not wanting to fully conform to the system. They represent some odd sense of individuality. They represent my country roots and love. Most of all, they represent freedom.

I’ve been listening to a CD called Grandfather’s Hat by, believe it or not, Jeff Daniels, and it is not what you would expect. It somehow speaks to the wanderer in me. His song Mile 416, talks of travels, across Highway 2, but more importantly about what a wanderer sees, remembers and forgets along the way.

And, that’s how it is; what you see, what you remember and what you forget.

The song reminds me of traveling up M-32 in Michigan, with a barn off in the distance, as I travel north to Charlevoix. It is red, as red as barns are supposed to be, with white trim and Celtic markings on it.

It reminds me of driving along I-80, in August, through Iowa. The miles and miles of sunflowers, in full bloom. Their brilliance accentuated by the sun and a cloudless, blue sky.

I think of Highway 34 in Colorado, smelling the pine as they whistle with the mountain winds, eventually reaching the point they end to make way for the tundra. The air as clear as it will ever become.

And, it reminds me of KY 80, out to Hazard, Kentucky, where the trees and small homes dot the landscape reminding me there are poor here in this country, too. Coal is one man’s gold and another’s subsistence.

The song also reminds me of Hancock County Road 6, in north central Ohio, where a graying barn leaned with the wind and a vagrant, with two canes, walked the lonely miles. His skin, tarnished by the years, was wrinkled and brown from the sun. I am sure he had a name.

Yes, this song reminded me of all this. But, I also mark my maps with a blue pen so I know where I have been. Partially because I know I will forget, but also to ensure I continue to explore every inch, acre and mile I can.

Looking down the road that passes in front of my house, just a small place in America, I realize it’s the beginning for any journey.

My truck, my dungarees, my guitar, my pad of paper and the endless black top.

EjG

Photographs

I've been taking photographs in order to understand life. Each representing some reality I know, experience, or dream about. It is an attempt to find beauty and art in a place that stifles them both, stifling it with an ultra conservative exuberance for it's not what the mundane can have nor understand. Once I was able to dream, but those dreams keep getting fainter as time moves along. Therefore, I take these pictures, began drawing, and began writing again. I'm recapturing these dreams.

There is no life without art and beauty...

EjG