mmmdlxxxix

Altogether Somehow Less Bitter Than Sweet

     I/Think it is the writing that makes/Me sick.
                                          —Cedar Sigo

I suggest to most anyone
that I have a lousy memory,
and I believe this to be true.
But, say, when I’m asked to
regurgitate what I’ve been
doing all day, or for any dur
ation, I most often reach a
very solid and anxiety-in
ducing blank, unable to be
gin to even explain what it
was I was just a moment
ago doing. That doesn’t
mean, though, that I’m
not so often, if not rather
incessantly, flooded with
memories. And some of
those memories seem to
cloud my brain more com
pletely than others. For
example, dad’s cattle
that were kept up Pine
Mountain when I was
just old enough to re
member anything, or
to bring that memory
with me this far, any
way. These, my first
cattle and pine mem
ories, on Grandpa’s
coniferous land, which
would soon be sold, so
that the cows, poor
things (or maybe not,
I suppose I couldn’t
at all judge such bo
vine notions), were
nomads, moving from
pasture to pasture,
in Franklin County
and beyond – Logan,
Sebastian, etc. – count
ies with names all too
similar to the names
of all of those Lolita-
esque, teenage lovers
one could find in almost
any of the heady gay
novels of the 80’s or
90’s, which were al
ways so dreary and
full of the plague,
and they were the
same names that
would appear as
the names of char
acters in those tv
series that began
to pop up not too
long afterward,
the ones with the
hypersexual char
acters wherein the
teen-esque drama
would mostly trans
pire on expansive
dancefloors off
of which (and
through the
television set)
us gawkers could
swear we could lit
erally smell the ec
stasy emanating.
These televisions
had always been
fortuitously hooked
up in some messy
way (and illicitly,
most usually) to
an unknowing
neighbor’s cable
box, or else to one
of those newfangled
dishes that started
popping up on apart
ment roofs everywhere.
Not by me, though – I
was never the hacker
in any of my clicks.
But I would at least
occasionally gawk at
these more life-affirm
ing, soap-sud shows.
These were suddenly
happier times. Some
how. It was as if there
was a collectively con
scious decision. But
death was still a stench
that just could not be
escaped, much as the
smell of the pine trees
that lined the trail that
I’d walk with my dad
halfway up Pine Mount
ain to call the few (but
always growing number)
of cows down to be fed.
Somehow this admixture

of pine and cowpies and
ecstasy and death still
lingers with me, so that
I can close my eyes and
take a long and deep
breath, and there they
are, all within me, I’m
smelling them alto
gether and also in
dividually. I can
pick each out.
Which is hardly un
pleasant. It’s just
inescapable, this
olfactory nostalgia
that fills my nose
for days on end
sometimes. And
by the time the
air is cleared, or
I’m filled with new
aromas, be they
from the present
or the past, that
same mix is back,
a blast from the
past that remains
present, with pro
mises of reprisal,
making home
out of anywhere
and everywhere.