The Radio Tower Must Come Down

I was a strange child, even more strange than I have become as an adult.  Indeed my current quirks and habits, my infatuations and my pet peeves are simply aged versions of the oddities that were constantly exploding from my childhood frame. 

 

The strangest thing about me, beyond the constant cravings for mayonnaise and my innate need to sing show tunes at the top of my lungs, was my love of the a-typical landscapes.  I loved water towers, rusty train tracks, and awkward buildings.  Their imperfections and bizarre qualities were beautiful to me or at least honest.  I felt at home among the broken things in our world – the shattered windows, the potholes, the fallen tree branches.  I felt a connection with the out-of-place pieces around me – Telephone wires, gutters, and cars unused in so many years that they had grow into the place they were left.

 

I felt a similarity to these things – an inexplicable kinship.   And there was one thing, one monument protruding out of the horizon of my childhood that echoed the awkwardness I felt inside every time I looked at it.

 

Out my window and stuck into the pristine and relatively untouched ground of Annapolis was a radio tower with its flashing red cap and skeletal form speaking to me a language I understood – a language to belong. 

 

“Oh that thing is so hideous. I can’t stand it.  Why can’t they put it somewhere else?” I would hear the complaints still every night I would whisper the unspoken poundings of my heart to this creature as if it were a star with its seat in the heavens.  It was a comfort to me though I had no idea why at the time. It accompanied my childhood and was a constant presence as I grew up.

 

Its feet awkwardly touched the same thick grass of the nearby field where I ran day after day with blades whipping against my bare and brown knees.  It sat there high above my town and saw everything.  It saw me grow up and it saw Annapolis change around it. 

 

Slowly and surely I forgot it even existed as we forget things that were once precious to us like a blanket, or a place, or a friend.

 

And now years have gone by without even a shudder.  They must pass and we must change. Childhood has gone.  The radio tower that was so familiar to me in my youth has not even a mark on the ground as a memorial of its existence. 

 

How does it happen?  Where do those things go?  Does God have some strange and divine storehouse where these things are kept?  Do they go to a place hung with pirate hooks, and fairy dust, and bright eyes? 

 

Though my life has changed and it’s landscape as well, I still search for things that echo the sentiments of my heart yet now, instead of looking at the broken things of the world, I look to the sky and I search for a small blinking red light and hope that it might give me some reassurance that I still belong.

Like Your Mother

Walking into my mother’s house is like a fairytale.  You feel like you’ve accidentally happened on a door that transports you to another world with bright colors everywhere and sweet smells.  The walls are filled with art and the shelves crammed with books, the tables topped with fresh flowers from her garden and a fire burning beside. 

Her house is a pair of red slippers, a wardrobe, a rabbit hole, and “straight on ‘til morning.”

You are no longer in a drab suburb but have entered a mystical land where the food tastes better, your hair looks great, and the beds are blissful mounds of cotton and silk ready with open arms to cradle you in sleep and lead you into dreams.

It is strange that such a person as my mother has been able to stay in one place so long.  Years ago, having lost her father to a heart attack and her mother to heartbreak, she came to this town with just a suitcase and alarm clock in search of the home that was stolen from her by tragedy. The free spirit and troubled heart of her youth chased her even into my own. 

Everything that my mother has done since then has been an attempt to create what she desired most and what she believed, beyond all trouble, existed – a home and a refuge from restlessness. 

A new and exotic kitchen color would appear on the walls, which she would inevitably want to change the very next day.  Not quite right.  Not right at all.  “I want to throw up just looking at it!” She would say. 

Home Depot’s color selection never fully met her vision.

When Mom was not teaching, running her own business, or writing, she was creating.  I never had store bought blankets.  I never felt a synthetic comforter around my body in fact the term seems to me an oxymoron.  No, my mom made quilts that she neatly folded and stacked high near every couch.  “You see this Valerie?” she said while spreading one out on my bed.  “This one is called trip around the world.” She would look down at it wistfully and then look at me with the same expression.

And she would travel, willingly throwing herself into any culture and finding the most charming corner only to return home again, carrying some piece of that world with her.  Every trip around the world would expand her paradise one more inch, one more keepsake.

Part of my understanding of this woman still lies in vivid memories of her standing in front of a window as if it were a magic mirror, her hair lit with the light of dusk and her expression one of deep and unreachable longing. 

I have always dreamed of the thoughts that she must have had in those quiet moments and over time I have determined that she must have been speaking with God.  She must have been asking him what heaven was like.  And I believe that her home is a painting, her scaled model of the things he told her.  I believe that he gave her dreams so that she would not have to search any longer.

Now her vision reaches far beyond the walls of her house.  She has dreamt greater things for me, her daughter, than I ever could have allowed myself to dream and has again and again invited me through the doorway and into her world.

People constantly tell me that I look like my mother.  This is compliment enough but I wish they would tell me, “You dream like your mother.”

This is a love song...

The smell - that nearly rotten brackish smell - twists through the stray wisps of my hair as I peddle my Schwinn down passed the large water-front homes and through the tall trees to the edge of the peninsula.  

Now I see the water logged stars and breakers go about their usual business.  Fishermen still sit with their polls beside them though time nears mid-day and the chances of making a good catch slim rapidly.  They hesitate to leave lest the perfect fish should pass and never return.  

A blue heron shoots a suspicious eye in my direction and launches in, to safer and quieter ground.  This native celebrity has no tolerance for interruptions.  You will never find her sunning at the community pool nor venturing out to the super market.  No, she keeps to herself and considers it an offense when others do not as well.  

In the distance cloudy-white patches of fabric rise from barely visible ships beneath them and labor to pull their vessels against the tide.  

I was born out of this river.  My hem eternally pinned to its shores by the warning lights that spear deep into its body along every inlet.  I am tied to its docks.  I am forever bound by this place for it holds captive the root of my peace - an unbreakable chain and the origin of its lock unknown to me to this day.

Whenever I leave, I feel as though I am a ghost, a breathless and inadequate print of my true self.  Always the sweet melodies of the Severn call me home.  And when I return my heart beat slows and steadies as the water against docked boats in the harbor.  

For truly my wholeness is here - my heaven.

If you'd like to know where I get the photos for my blog please visit www.andrewvache.com and see for yourself.  Trust me.  You'll love it.

Just a little green

There is this great Joni Mitchell song...ok, ok.  Bare with me here.  I have a point.

Anyway, there is this great Joni Mitchell song.  In it she says, "Just a little green, like the color when the spring is born".  Can't you see it!  Oh!

Today, the little green is here and it hasn't been easy.  As I look out upon the barely new leaves I can't help thinking how hard it must be for them to even get to this point.  "when the spring is born".  

Birth isn't easy.  For anyone.  Let's just settle that once and forever.

Strangely enough our longing for spring's arrival hinders our understanding of the inner workings of this particular season.  "It just happened.  Spring came over night." Like magic.  Right?  We fail to realize how much energy it takes to push a single leaf out of a stem or branch.  The ruff core hides the hardworking flesh beneath. But in the end it's worth all the labor because the leaf provides the plant with energy.  It's survival.

I've been writing a song recently that has me stuck (hence the blog) mostly because I know how important it is going to be for me to write and complete.  Songwriting is so cathartic for me that I often feel selfish. 

Who needs therapy?  Just write songs!  

It's survival.

I've been pushing and working, losing sleep, walking around like a zombie, feeling bare branched and frustrated.  I'm willing to go through the pain of labor just to have the product.

And I know that birth is inevitable.  It has to come.  Soon?  Please!  

Here's to birth!  Here's to spring!

the problem with binoculars

You've seen it.  You know exactly what I'm talking about.  

You're sitting down with a friend and you notice that they are not really paying attention to what you're saying.  "mhmm."  they say.  Some how you can't ever get them to listen to you. 

 They're just not there.  It's like they're focused on something completely different than the words coming out of your mouth.

 

Or there's the relationship you're in.  "When we're _____ (fill in the blank), then we'll be happy".  At some point in the future you'll be happy the only problem with that being that you're not happy currently.

Maybe it's your career.  "Ok, well right now I'm working a job I hate but in a couple years I'll get a promotion to a job I hate less".  

"I can't do that!  What if I fail!"  What if....

Everyone has glasses ...even if they have 20/20 vision.  Some people call this a world view.  I call it survival.

Just to get through life we pick up pairs of glasses.  We have bifocals for comparing the past and present and special glasses so that you can examine your current life situation more accurately with precision and wisdom.  You may have even heard of seeing life through rose-colored glasses...same thing.

The only problem with this is that we sometimes forget to take the glasses off and we keep piling them on the end of our nose until we have some sort of weird twisted binoculars teetering back and forth on our faces.  And this isn't just uncomfortable.  It's bad.  Really bad.  

When you're looking through binoculars all the time, you only really see a small portion of the scenery far away.  We begin to make judgements about our current lives based on the narrow perspective of what may or may not be our future.  

Maybe you've met someone like this - who can only think about the future and forgets to live their present.  Musicians have a an acutely difficult time avoiding this.  They want to succeed so much that they forget to enjoy music.  

The problem with binoculars is that you trip a lot more when you wear them.  Glasses are fine... but let's save ourselves from some serious pain and keep it to one pair.  

blisters

Blisters...stupid blisters

People always say that mistakes help you to learn or struggle makes you stronger.  I have a 

question for all of those people...when?

I recently had a voyage, and I call it a voyage mostly because the length was longer than I was expecting.  Yes, it was a voyage and one that I was insufficiently prepared for.  I brought no jacket and I wore high heels.  

It all started like this:  I was born... and twenty five years later my friends decided to buy me a drink to celebrate the event.  "How wonderful!", you might think or "What wonderful friends!".  I would not argue with you at this point of the story nor would I blame the outcome on these two lovely individuals.  

We decided to walk and we also decided to take the pretty way, which always means longer. Early on in my epic adventure my friend said, "Do you need to change your shoes?".

"No", I said, "these shoes are miraculous.  I could wear them all day."

My pompous claims soon came tumbling down and I began to feel an extraordinarily sower pain in my right heal...then my left.  

If at this point I had said something to my friends they would have insisted that we turn around and go back but I could hardly be expected to admit that I was a fool and did not in fact have miracle shoes.  Repentance fails to be one of my strengths.  

So my unseen blisters grew and grew and my pride fell.  

I now sit with flip flops on, having worn them for the last three days despite the 30 degree weather, simply because I could not fit shoes over my circular shame tattoos.  

This reminds me of my own life experience.  I often talk up my own choices (like choosing a thankless and penniless career) only to recognize that other people's choices are valid too.  I love taking the pretty way but my vanity often inhibits my enjoyment.  

So I have blisters.  I've made a ton of stupid mistakes but I feel more weak than strong.  Yes, weak in the light of self-understanding.  When does the blister heal?  When do you become stronger because of your poor choices or your failure to see passed your own experience?

I suppose I have learned one thing.  If you have a long way to go...leave your vanity behind.  You'll be better off without it.