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His Favorite Chords. |
| Written by Nunyo Bidness | |
| Sunday, 25 May 2008 | |
 Midday naps hit me like a train. The record was spinning gently, and the needle paralleled this by following the grooves gracefully, and the speakers paralleled this by gently pushing music out of the speakers, without pops, without cracks, and my ears paralleled this by following notes in pattern and sinking into the music. Each second left me more in bed than the second before until I was nothing but a pile of myself, satisfied. I had just come out of a traffic jam that seemed to stretch for miles.I was awake now, dreaming at high noon in a conscious mind, lulled into tranquility by a sublime harmonica interrupting optimistic guitar. My eyes were dead and I didn't need them. Myself, I'd like to think I was sitting in a boxcar with two feet out of the side,on a train making its way on two unreliable, sun-warmed, ancient rails around the corner of a cliff. The ocean that I faced tried to crawl up towards me, up towards the clouds, and chased the train all the way to wherever I was going to end up. It never made it, always crushing against the rocks before rallying into another violent white movement at the crest of a deep blue, trying to pull my feet. Pines and dark dirt intertwined with jagged rocks painted the face of the mountain on the opposite side of the ocean and the tracks. The sun was to my back, the boxcar was otherwise empty, and the train released a plume of healthy, thick and gray smoke that crawled towards the clouds lining the sky. An unhealthy, unnatural, devious, destructive twang from a rusty guitar that wasn't inside of my ten by ten liberating cell crawled inside under the door. It was off key and recycled. The train disappeared into the ocean, and the clouds passed me down the mountain, uplifting pine trees and dark dirt in a violent grasp, dragging them down the rigid cliff. A whirlpool began to form near the coast, pulling the rails from the ground with its own gravity and making them disappear. I had nowhere to go now. I started down the cliff but it was eroding into the whirlpool faster than I could climb down it. The guitar kept twanging unfamiliar sounds that vibrated through space like car bombs. The last majestic, tall, proud pine tree swirled down the whirlpool. The only things left were the white walls of my room, and the needle riding the grooves, desperately trying to compete with the heretical chords that yodeled into my psyche. I was uncomfortable and broken. Ten by ten had turned back into infinity, and my foot began to start softly preparing the brake. It was my dad. Commercial breaks were muted and replaced with bits from songs he knew and bits from songs he created like bastard children. Effortless destruction echoed from those strings. I pulled the needle off and the record slowed down. The groove in my bed filled and my eyes adjusted to the light from outside. That twanging, echoing, vicious guitar filled a mind soaking in revenge. I opened my door and walked down the hallway. Sure enough, dad was back in his chair. There was a glass of tea waiting on the table next to him and his hair was a Saturday untended. The guitar, a light brown from the 70's, was in his lap, twanging away, filling the room. His eyes were closed and sunk into the recliner. Baseball glowed from the television, and the Dodgers were up by three in the fifth inning. Shadow crept from his cheeks and chin and upper lip. He stuttered from one old blues tune that he played often to something unfamiliar and improvised like a rickety bridge. His fingers hit the strings and sent what he wanted out with a light, unintended smile. I stood at the end of the hallway and he didn't notice me. He didn't appear to be able to. I walked away. I washed my hands and my face to snap out of the morning that the nap-record-mind coalition had invented. Tranquility never had company. Tranquility was a selfish number, like skipping church or leaving a friend out of a Friday night. Attaining it was a most human goal. Keeping it for myself was just plain selfish. Copyright 2008 Nunyo Bidness |
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