Lilly Mae Mathew's Guide To the Over Compensated Life

Straight from the hip I shoot with my best writing taking the air like tender meat. There's always something to be said for vulnerability, but who has the time, much less the desire to throw yourself in a frying pan? I do. And so it is...

It's raining tonight on these streets where it never fucking rains, and there's plenty of piss and shit to be washed away on these brick-lined avenues. Sickly enough, both literally and figuratively. You see, Cinderella's pumpkin turns into a festering gourd here from time to time, but much more infrequent than it did in the paper city just North of the Trinity River...where I lost my mind...in all it's filthy bronze elegance. So I think I can readily take this in stride and somehow manage. Life works in cycles, and we're all in this together, right? Sure.

.22 bullets used to fly like single-file flocks of albatross in the stratoshpere when I was younger. My aim was true out there, back then. Always.

That little town, Rochelle, which burned down in a white hot sunstream when it was up for county seat in the late 1800's. It had the disgrace of not being named after a famous Texas, slave-owning general. It lost because the rail head and locomotives gave Brady (Mister Peter Brady) the jurisprudence to govern the small county in which I was raised (Confederate General Ben McCulloch), but my ancestors pulled for their territory. It was a few votes short (despite 22% living below the Brady poverty line, but who knows that, and more importantly, who seems to care? That's another clothesline for another afternoon).

The Hill Country never looks sweeter than it does between our homeland and San Saba County. Lilly Mae saw it, but she didn't pay much care though...with her French-styled counters and ice-cream offerings for every child-like humanoid that passed through those arched doors. She was there because God, or the universe, or some force of nature told her to be there. 50 cents on the dollar was her standard price, and a smile and handshake was all it took to make a transaction. She was as beautiful as those hills, and her smile was welcoming like the big oak shade trees. Commerce still found her on any day, sunny or overcast. Sodas and nails, soups and flour, cash...no credit...but she held tabs.

I can still pick out the exact trees where my mother used to escape those she was surrounded by and lose herself in Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Dostoevsky. There's a strong "V-split" in a tree about 200 yards South of the ranch house...next to the crumbling livestock barns, where she would sit for hours and educate herself from herself about the world that she hadn't seen. Away from her brothers, and away from the chaos that filled that little rock-lined, hand-made house. Hours she would sit and take the Hill Country, and inspired words, in like a sponge, and she felt free and near God, or something more significant than what she'd seen. It was the same draw from her chest that pulled me to sink a cross made of cedar-posts about three feet deep into the ground where nobody ventures. It's where I thought I might find the most appropriate place to talk to God. He hasn't disagreed with the placement. Not yet anyways.

Someone once stumbled upon it, and questioned it's existence in a way that spoke of inquisitive despondence, but I never gave a fuck about those who inquired about the time I spent on my knees. I pray there when seas get rough. I pray there when skies are blue. I pray there when passing by, and I pray there when I feel inclined. I like to think she did the same in her own place. In fact, I know she did. I know of two trees that hold significance to her that she's never shared with anyone in her family. That is a mother/son conversation...and I inherited my mother's sentimentality. Thank heaven for it all...and damn it all. It's wrecked me and saved me. But mostly saved me.

I remember Mathews Grocery, before they tore it down with the mid-sized wrecking ball. There was a wicked, black 1990 Ford Ranger for sale out front that I coveted a few years before my legal driving age. But they tore her store down after she passed, like the world tears down our history, and consequently our innocence. America shreds it's history like a failed document in a corporate conference room. Ashamedly so. But nothing could've supported the belfry in that building. It was beyond it's time, and heavier than most. Like most everyone I know...myself included.

She used to sit behind the counter, serving sandwiches and smiles like a gypsy, enjoying her time pulled from the killing fields. Sent a couple of her sons over in planes made of bailing wire and super-glue to fight for Europe. Her store sat before our little parcel of land on the highway leading there, and it was always the halftime show during day-long work trips that sat more like dread as mold on wet carpet to a young boy, or glorious afternoons yanking fish out of our ponds with my father and little sister.

I drink whiskey, like my grandfather...like my sister does. It's in our blood.

You try and follow your heart, and if you're serious, you're not disappointed if it leads to complete and utter madness. In fact, you should welcome it if it beckons. The fire burns anything it wants. It's up to you to put it out or fuel it. Nobody else. It's not done for you. I think that's one of the strangest things.

Ahh, Mr. Guthrie, say it ain't so...

There's a black wind blowing through the cotton fields baby. I sit here with my unfortunate old soul, delightfully anachronistic. Sarcastically smiling where nobody understands but me.

Nothing seems to be more important in this life than understanding who you are. Nothing has shown me that it is.

Reset

Our greatest triumph will be that which we overcame. Measurement will tell us so, in due time. There's things that mean everything to me that can't be dulled by the general minutiae of life. "Each wrinkle on your face, I know it at a glance, you cannot run and hide, nor duck nor dodge them. Your carcass and your deeds, will fertilize the seeds of the men that stood to guard my thirty thousand."

I'm reminded of particular direction offered from my father on some sweat-soaked, work-heavy day on our Central Texas ranch, driving fence-posts. "You NEVER hang your head for anybody, but you NEVER place yourself above anybody. We're all in this together." There's a dark wind that blows through the cotton fields, but we weather the storm. In the cellar, or with bloody fingers in the field. Either way, we process that sentiment because of those that came before us in a far and distant time. I wonder?

We are all in this together. Hell, I see you still have his toothbrush in your bathroom. I take that for what it's worth and continue my ceaseless search. Can you blame me? No, you can't. I can't blame you either. I'm proud and deflated by certain things, but as Hemingway said, "A man can be defeated, but never destroyed." And Oscar Wilde said, "Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future." True.

You play every part scripted for you perfectly in my dreams. They are frequent...admittedly so. I also read some book about our star-signs and how compatible we are. The jury's out...

I'd stop the dreams if I could. But I'd never touch them with reality, because there's no way you could fulfill their lofty expecations. So I leave them in a satisfied, hazy memory. It's where you belong, after all. In reality.

Ships With Holes Will Sink

And this has me thinking about my true friendships. You navigate and effort within the best of your abilities to control the dynamic within the parameters of intimate relations, but how much control do we really have? In one of my irrelevant songs I say, "We slide in and out of change, but nobody ever really changes." Time, circumstance, life...it all has infinite elements that shape and mold who we are. We share our experiences like a prescribed personal essay with the people we hold infinitely dear, but what if they don't reciprocate? Or better yet, what if they simply don't want to hear your bullshit, or tire of your presence? Especially when it has a foundation in what previously seemed unshakable. I like to convince myself that the friendships I've cultivated are immune to change, but that's probably myopic on my part. In fact, I know it is. I don't hold anybody to their alleged obligations anymore. Shit, I never really have. People are free to flow in and out of my life. This might be shortsighted on my part, but I have ideals that aren't going to change; no matter who is present or who isn't. I am who I am. While I hold personal expectations for myself (in a perfect world), I won't stop being who I am because of some "potential" construct of personhood that someone has placed on my head. I didn't choose this life, I'm just living it...sometimes poorly, sometimes gracefully. To add to that, I'm not regretful. I choose, and pursue, the things I enjoy, and avoid that which I don't. I'm only participating in the paths that have been laid on my plate on a daily basis like every other person in this world. Potential is a dangerous word. I'll navigate around it in the only way I know how...and I have my blueprint (like everybody else)...I don't need approval. In the end, I only have to answer to myself (and I hold myself to higher standards than anybody in this world, or the next, can possibly hope to impose on me). But I'll deal with the consequences of my decisions, like a man, like the way my father taught me, when it's my time to answer. I once read a great quote, "Let the world know the weight of who you are, and then let the world deal with it." I'm an idealist, so naturally, that's gonna ring true to me. How can I not? Really? My ideals sometimes get me in trouble, though. It's all I know.

Doors open and doors close. I'm not in the business of lies, and I'm certainly not in the business of slamming doors shut on those I love and respect. I'm not sure I'm ready for some of those doors to close just yet. But I have no control over certain elements, and I shouldn't be ashamed of that. I won't be. I just wish there was a more efficient means of communicating that unfolding dynamic. But it is what it is. It is what it is. I've had enough life under my belt to understand that I know ships with holes will sink. Sometimes sad, but sometimes unavoidable. It is what it is. As my musical hero Ryan Adams says (and I say this with no arrogance), "I always win in the end." I say that because I hold true to my ideals. I'm not ashamed to lose and let go. One of the most important lessons I've ever learned is to let go. I'm not afraid of this. But maybe that's my problem?

Abandonment issues in their twisted vacuum. Maybe that's the issue? Maybe not.

I promise, I'm not self-involved. Very much the opposite. Don't know how to handle recent developments. But this is how I've chosen, I suppose.

On another, unrelated note, life is good. I have my first "band gig" next Tuesday. I couldn't have picked three better gentlemen to play with, and I'm finally doing it. It's what I moved here for, and it's actually happening. I like our songs, and I hope people like our performance. We'll see.

Someone once told me, "You think too much." I love the person who told me that, like a brother, and I don't ever take it as an insult although I think that was it's original intent. I take that as direct fucking representation of who I am. If you don't like it, I can't change that. I'm sorry.

Faith (in every respect). Patience (in ways that need to be learned). "Heal your vines, you'll heal inside eventually."

Movies

I just watched "500 Days of Summer" and even though I had at least three glasses of wine while doing so, I've come to the conclusion that if I had the talent to write a movie about my 20's, it probably would've been that one. It's great...it made me squirm in my seat...and it's haunting. To me.

I'm tired of being the set of training wheels for girls before they get on their big bikes. But nothing in the prior entries of this blog should lend surprise to that.