Exhausted Ray

There is something about that late December sun my friend.
Something that seems spent, weak it's days of life to end

We laughed about your days in Seattle
A glimmer of hope in this early winter gloomy battle

Of heart and soul in changing winds yet to come
In New Year's tide.

The stillness of my forlorn office
Becons another year has expired, here's hoping old habits have died.

A simple piece about the essence of the final week of the year! In my office at work a lot of life is lived as I travel anywhere in the nation alone on my computer searching for new accounts! But, a good friend stopped by to visit and check in, last Friday, the final work day of the year. This piece is a narrative about good people in a world that is increasingly losing them. It is a story about how the world goes still after the pomp and circumstance of an over commercialized holiday season of noise, joy and bustle. It reflects the spiritual exhaustion of a year of emotion good and bad. It reflects the quiet but peaceful death of a year. What better symbol than a weak ray of sunlight trying to warm a solemn  office room peering through a window! What better hope than to have a consistent friend in a world of upheaval and in a time of calendar change. Happy New Year as to hope for a future of better things.

What This Year's Christmas Has Taught Me

A Christmas bonus is something in and of itself. It is an indication you are doing a good job! It is an indicator your hard work has paid off. Juli, a gentle eyed blond from right outside of Tampa Florida came to me as a gift in disguise five days before Christmas Eve. She worked for a credit loan company. Through contacts she was looking for a cheap place to stay as she was traveling through her assigned territory of Alabama and Florida.  Being Christmas I willingly obliged knowing I could use the extra money on rent. After she arrived on Wednesday we explained pleasantries but due to our schedules we never really spoke aside from me recommending places to eat. We did not get a chance to converse! She did bond with my dog quickly though.

Then Thursday night arrived and I got a chance to hear her story. You see,  Hurricane Irma had ravaged her neighborhood and her home had caught fire killing both of her dogs. As she relayed this I could understand why she was so tolerant of my rambunctious jagg'd terrier! She absolutely spoiled her. It was as if time stood still and nothing else mattered to her. I could see in her eyes, her facial expression and her inflection that she was so much more appreciative than she may have been, than say, this summer.

The following morning, as I was backing out of the driveway, I scraped against her Alamo rental car. After using an assortment of colorful language, I jumped out of my car as visions of my fleeting Christmas bonus danced in my head and flushed down the toilet. Gathering myself I could still find solace in believing she had bought rental insurance at the airport! Two hours later she confirmed she HAD NOT. Of course as we say down South, I got to carrying on, hollerin' and raising a mild ruckus in my office behind closed doors to myself. Before she left she requested the opportunity to walk Marnie! Knowing the healing she needed how could I not allow it.  Of course she texted me a photo and it was good in focus. That being,  it made me focus on what is important what is lasting, what is noble, what is eternal. The meaning of it all really hit me as she assured me her regular insurance would cover it! Calling my agent it appeared mine would to. I could end my song and dance and act like an adult again.

But, even if insurance had not covered it, and who knows it may not, Julie taught me so much in just an amazing two days. Almost tearing up throughout the day I finally realized what a blessing she was! As she is now back with her family, there is that chance that she may never cross my path again. But, she taught me a lesson I always know but always forget! That people matter. That mercy matters, that empathy matters, that material, reputation and STUFF do not! Julie, you will rebuild again soon. But, don't you know that you have already completed my foundation. One that is prone to rot during such a consumerist time of year! You gave me this year's best present. Merry Christmas Juli. Merry Christmas!

JCB

The Late Film Director John Hughes & His Relationship To My Family

John Hughes was the master at taking the mundane and making it spectacular.  When you watch his movies, his characters and the setting of the stories he was trying to tell, you soon see it could have been anyone, anyplace in America.  New York City is a place that most people have in their family tree.  As peculiar as it sounds, it has never shown up in mine.  As my brother and I have done family tree research with a fine tuned comb of knowledge and research apparatus (him to find names for his four boys and me because it is an escape) going back a couple of hundred years we have found cities like Boston, Philadelphia, DC and Baltimore but NOT one iota of NYC.  Heck, I even had my father's uncle live down in Miami for a time.  Virtually, every major city on the east coast shows up in our family bibles and chronicles but that big gapping hole in the form of a GIANT APPLE never has existed.  New York state is even represented in the form of Syracuse on my father's dad's side but still no NYC.  When you talk to most people they can eventually trace NYC back into their life story in one form or another. I grew up around families here in Alabama that could claim that.  As a source of pride my brother and I stood out.  For we had CHICAGO instead.  We had the mundane, we had John Hughes' Illinois as OUR HERITAGE.

One day my father's dad, born and raised in Pleasant Hill, Illinois sat down and told me an amazing story about perseverance.  You see, there was a city called Fort "Something or the Other" I forgot the name because now it does not exist in our modern times.  The speculators that were looking to build this great city, Fort "Something or the Other" were competing with my ancestors for the next great city in Illinois.  My grandfather's family chose to build up an old French and Indian settlement that was considered "swampy" full of insects and just plain STUNK!  The settlers laughed at the team of investors and speculators that my family was a part of.  They said you are wasting your time and you are foolish.  As fate would have it, the settlement my relatives and some other families had faith in became CHIGAGO and the other project CEASED TO EXIST!

John Hughes' films most always were filmed and set in CHICAGO or Illinois.  Even as  a boy in elementary school my brother and I would watch films like "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" with bursting pride.  For we felt like John was telling our story.  The settings were not fancy Park Avenue or anywhere in NYC.  John was a master at making the unassuming MAGICAL.  CHICAGO and ILLINOIS are just that, when compared to other places in the world.  Suffice it to say, in the early 90's when the CHICAGO BULLS won all of their championships my brother and I again let everyone know it.  It was especially gratifying that we had close friends who's family was from the NEW YORK CITY area. It was especially gratifying that our BULLS beat their KNICKS in the Eastern Conference finals so many times during that decade.  And believe me WE LET THEM KNOW IT!

Flying to the West Coast in April of 2009 I was assigned to O'Hare as a layover. Two months prior my Illinois grandfather had been called home at 92 years old.  As the captain told us we were over Illinois some tears welled up in my eyes as I looked down into the green foliage of some unknown community.  As we landed and I touched Illinois soil in Chicago for the first time, it was sentimental.  Yes, a year or two later I went through that same airport on the way back from Ukraine and even had a border line temper tantrum filled, snowed in layover visit last December on the way back from sunny LA in Midway.  Even Chicago style hot dogs could not make that lonely filled evening of sitting up all night and watching old t.v. shows on You Tube better.  Yes, alone in an empty airport with nothing to do but vent and wait on a flight back to Birmingham, AL. So unassuming and mundane.  Almost, the type of plot and setting of a JOHN HUGHES MOVIE!  SWEET HOME CHICAGO, BABY DON'T YA' WANNA GO?  WHO NEEDS NEW YORK, WHEN GREATNESS IS ALREADY AT HAND?

The Orange & Black

LYING SO WARM AND SECURE IN THAT BLADE OF GRASS

SKYWARD VIEW, I THOUGHT ANYTHING 

WAS POSITIVELY POSSIBLE, IT WOULD ALL LAST

GULF STATES STEEL

PUKED AN ORANGE NIGHT

INTO YOUR FACADE

OLE JOHNNY BOY 

WAS THE KING OF THE BLOCK

US YOUNG BOYS IDOLIZED

AS THE SOUND OF CAR ENGINES PLAYED

THOSE WARM SUMMER 

AUGUST NIGHTS

MELTED INTO SEPTEMBERS PAST

I ALWAYS THOUGHT AMERICANA WOULD LAST

TUGGIN' MY FATHERS PANTS 

WHILE HOLDING MY MOTHER'S GLANCE

I JUST ONE MORE CHANCE

TO SEE THOSE TIGERS TOUCHDOWN DANCE

I NEVER THOUGHT THE BLACK & ORANGE

WOULD FADE

AS I PEER OUT MY OFFICE WINDOW, INTO OBLIQUE ADULTHOOD

I NEVER THOUGHT OLE' GADSDEN HIGH, WOULD CEASE TO EXIST ONE DAY

* piece of work based off of a feeling of nostalgia as I listen to old 80's music that takes me back to boyhood.  The neighborhood I would ride my bike to meet friends in was a mile away.  My friends older brothers would invite us to play tackle football and we would take the pride of being tackling dummies.  On those old dusty warm southern summers although we hated the beatings we would idolize my friends brothers who were  5 or so years our senior and at the local high school, Gadsden High School.  Historically, one of Alabama's most dominant schools academically and athletically. It was nothing for major colleges to come to town to see our boys and give 'em a scholarship with some going on to the pros. Or our girls to go on and become home coming queens at the local universities.  Boys from as far away as Mobile would seek our girls for dates. Or our bands to be regular attendees in New York's Thanksgiving parades.  Our high schools, Gadsden, Litchfield and Emma Sansom were the place of dreams and legends.  As a boy my parents, both alumni. would take me to games and on the way there the communities steel plant would have it's furnace tapped and it would emit an orange glow into the sky right behind the school and football stadium.  An orange glow into a black sky was fitting since that was the school's colors. All I would dream about was one day being old enough to attend and seek that stadium glory as an athlete and walk those halls as a student.  And as I did so for one year that dream faded quickly as I transferred to a private church affiliated school in a town just south of Gadsden due to rampant drug use among students at GHS.   I needed a more steady and productive environment. The school's building was modernistic and had architecture like something one would see in the San Francisco area.  In 2007 the city decided to combine all the high schools into one new school with a separate identity.  Rivalries and good times were immediately lost.  But, never fully gone as they live on into those burning images of all us who when hearing a song, recalling a name go back to one of the best times of the human experience, that being the 1980's and 1990's.

"Travelin' Man"

Something seems so strange
In that no one worries no more.....

'Bout the possibilities of what
Another can be

Something seems amiss....
That no one returns common courtesy 

In voice
Or with the commodity of a smile

Something seems so dark
With brother against brother 

With no one staying together 
And children reared by hollowed souled mothers

Meet the modern day travelin' man
The final light upon these dark hills

With voice drowned out by all 
That is mute banal and shrill 

Greet yesterday's travelin' man
Who'll drive till he finds that....

Other soul filled light, glow upon 
Those dark hills

Greet the present's travelin man
Who has found a home

For after weary travel, he never gave up
Piercing our modern times, as dispair unraveled 

*An ode to those who seek the giving people in life! For those that can kindly but needlingly reject those that cannot foster growth compassion empathy openness forgiveness and understanding. For those while weary from traveling in our modern days don't quit 'till the find the lovely people that can break the fear and be free to give of themselves! To those that seek that collective group of life givers who foster growth in others until everyone's final days!

"Two Flares Till Cape Canaveral"

As the salt stings my tongue
My love, your life force exhales sans lung

These two, two lights; that skyward arch
Are my warmth, warmth to

Your soul, I know in this new
Life-I'll walk into bliss-then you

My Master embraces all vision
As lungs fill but no pain

Can have me, us for eternal gain
As the sea has my shell

But, I touch your essence
And pass into eternal rights destroying hell

Two flares 'till Cape Canaveral were not enough
Your love sheltering soul-brine filled water could not snuff

John C. Brown
May 27, 2017

This is a piece inspired by my trips to the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of Florida as a little boy! One August afternoon after a heat filled passage through South Alabama, with mom listening to Air Supply( at least better than her usual Barry Manilow, Carpenters or whatever light ballad) I peered out of the window in Fort Walton Beach over the sand dunes toward the Gulf of Mexico behind and witnessed two flares go up over the dunes driving east on Highway 98 toward our usual spot in Destin! I was mesmerized and wondered then what story was being written at that moment out at sea?  Was someone in peril, was it just an ineffectual test! Was it someone's last gasp for rescue and hope?My Sophomore year at the University of Alabama, during an American Lit course I read a short story about 3 men who capsized in the Atlantic of off Jacksonville, FL! It was then that I harkened back to that fading August afternoon in Ft. Walton! Or being mesmerized when dad, myself and our friend Allen drove over the Banana River into Cocoa Beach and I saw the Atlantic for the first time. All the magic, romance, terror and finally resolve came up in that class that cold January afternoon in Ten Hoor Hall! Also, movies such as "The Perfect Storm" (Mark Walberg's moving monologue as he is floating at sea to his girlfriend), Jaws, Jaws 2 are inspirations as well. After listening to Air Supply while shaving this piece came to me completely in five minutes. I had felt it but had not lived it! I put myself into a man who some would note was dying excruciatingly alone! But, he was one that demonstrated more life and hope in his dying moment than some who live and die entirely around others! I hope it shows the selfless regard we have for others and the hope we have in our Maker shines and radiates in our current days as well as through the dark passage into extraordinary light of eternity! This life is a warm up and those dearest to our hearts, a lover possibly can take root making us never alone no matter if we are physically.

Prom Season Memories That Last A Lifetime (No not really)

In the neophyte minds of a 16, 17 and 18 year old prom sometimes means everything! The public school I started out at had it right in that all grades (9th - 12th) could attend! Most schools only had a Jr/Sr prom! But old Gadsden High School had the vision! Maybe it was the fact that all the upperclassmen girls dated us underclassmen boys! While my friends managed to show up with Seniors I was only cool enough to be asked out by a Junior! I guess dating guys who cannot yet drive or shave is bound to be the ultimate revenge of immasculation to your ex boyfriend jock senior! But whatever the reasoning it was light, fun and validating.

By the time I had moved into a Christian private school I was a sophomore which meant I could not attend unless asked out by an upperclassman. I guess private school girls must have been prudish. For me nor my friends were able to escape the lonesome bedrooms of cassette tapes (yes, I know) Vaseline, "nudey booty" magazines or memories of those upper class men girls back at the old school who did ask us out.  Well, my time finally came! Junior year was a wash as I asked out a real statuesque gal one grade below due to being encouraged by my brother to do so! She was statuesque alright! Not for being majestic, beautiful and tall. But displaying the innate ability to not want to dance or talk at all.

Senior year, it finally popped! It took me awhile longer this time to find a good fit.  Well, actually it was a girl that had had a crush on me (while I had a crush on an upperclassmen named Brooke- who repeatedly turned me and my friends down for dates-so high school huh) during my sophomore year but now dated a baseball player at a public school by the name of Zach (common name for males in north Alabama- who all seemed to play baseball and drive pick-em-up trucks) So, remembering she may be willing I went to Zach and asked his permission! He consented ( he had no choice, I played football) and Betsy and I had a good time! Of course friends of mine had fun trying to convince me Zach had changed his mind and wanted to beat me up!

Dustin (another common name for males in Alabama- and common names of guys who cruise town looking for girls in their pick ups with guys named Zach) asked a cute girl from Taco Bell to prom! I invited them to a pre prom dinner party at my home and they obliged! As Dustin spent most the night drinking whiskey I spent the time I was not with Betsy with his date dancing, petting and getting too darn close with someone else's date. Whatever the case it was fun and no one seemed to care. Everyone shared a quick laugh reminiscing about the time, two years prior, that Frank Ing inhaled too much helium at a prom prep function trying to be funny, only to pass out with the helium bottle falling down and hitting him sqaure on the taters. But, as the night progressed I learned that proms are not what they are made out to be. It was just a time of fun and fellowship! And as Zach and Dustin probably sat back and watched me dance with their gals they probably realized it to. The illegal beer they had must have been good. The time we all had that night, looking back on it must have been GREAT!

Dedicated To Zach & Dustin (Two Great Alabamians)

"West Haven" Cali's Healing Power

As weak solemn ray hits the wall of sky
Illuminating halcyon pale, March presses it's
drained green eyes, April's way as viral
feverished body relaxes caressed by steeping waters

Oh, it took a month to show what I knew
For all those thirteen years
That Atlanta was an impermissible
Mistress in the soirée of courtship

Yes, it took a month to show what I knew
For all the last six
That anything east, would leave my soul
Unrequited at best, and dissatisfied in the least

But, it never takes a second to soujorn
Renewing my affections for La Jolla's Cove
For it never takes three hours or more
to slope down Pacific Palisades

As Santa Monica Boulevard lies lit
Like holiday garden, the pulse of the street
ricochets Clean Bandit featuring Jess Glynn
Drawing energy inward at me, toward Mann's Theater

What was so myopic in Georgia
Is so stimulated by California
A weak solemn silver sliver of sun
Hit my window as I look behind shoulder, west

December drains it's weary red eyes January's way
As I draw my strength from that
Vivid dream of so much energy
seeped in from Sunset's pulse

Oh, it took now, a memory to show me
The east -Atlanta's gray gloom
No longer held its close minded sway
For the west, Cali gives my soul life

And vision for a new day

"Ham-n-Cheese Eddie" (Teenaged Inspiration)

So many say that God works in mysterious ways. That is how he brought the youth of First Baptist Church of Gadsden, AL, Eddie Nichols. Just out of Jacksonville State University, Eddie was unemployed like so many others right out of school. As luck would have it things were about to change for Eddie. One midsummers afternoon, one the way back from an Atlanta Brave's game, the current youth director mooned another car full of First Baptist youth on Interstate 20.  The church board of deacons thought only that moons should only present themselves at night. So he was promptly terminated and Eddie found his "big opening" "stark bare" in front of him to accept the Lord's call.

What started as shooting basketball with church youth morphed into something called JT's (Just For Teens) and Breakaway. By 1996 so many wayward teens had benefited first from "moon man" then Eddie's compassion for Jesus, Pruett's Bar-B-Que and all of us. And we learned so much good and so much mischievous. For all that was good we learned about sharing "the good news" with others while helping the indigent sectors of the community. For all that mischievous we learned how to bring someone close to whisper level, grab their shirt and fart really loud. Or also how to quickly get everyone to leave a dinner table and hide out of site, while some hapless victim left for the restroom, giving the impression we had left them all by themselves.

Eddie was cheap and he was a sandwich guy through and through. He turned the nominal into sport. Whether it was summer bible camp at Ft. Walton Beach, FL. or staying in log cabins with bunk beds akin to dog kennels, in West Virginia during winter, he always looked to book cut rate. My last trip with Eddie was during my sophomore year of college. Instead of going to ski on the powdered slopes of the west, Eddie sent us to the cheaper ice of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. I guess the motivation to learn snow plowing on ice to remedy full body paralysis works better on more dangerous ice. With the log cabin akin to dog kennels to anticipate, Eddie had booked a condo for he and his wife, overlooking the slopes with immaculate carpeting.

A youth named Tony Calvert was an excellent football punter. So good in fact that he earned a scholarship to Troy State University in South Alabama. While at Troy, Tony befriended Antwan. Antwan was country strong and could have made the NFL save for his 5'11 height. Soon, Antwan joined the high jinks of all that we were and became an outstanding preacher. In the winter of my sophomore year of college a bad stomach virus had hit Gadsden. So, it packed it's bags and went with us. As Eddie enjoyed his chalet and we the "dog kennels," the virus made it's way to Antwan. During the third day on the trip, Antwan made his way to Eddie's pad and his breakfast made its way up His esophagus, out his mouth onto the chalet's plush carpet. Doing everything we could to avoid the bug and curse the kennels we laughed heartily at Eddie's misfortune. For we knew he would not mind because the love we had for him and he for us was bonding. And we knew that had it not been for the BARE indiscretions of said "moonie," Eddie would never had made it to our lives. From that time on I called him "Ham-n- Cheese" Eddie. He may not have been fancy in all the worldly things but was so rich in all the things that mattered. Come bare butts, puke and any other shenanigans that came our way, nothing would separate us!

"Hollywood - The Great Editor In Rewriting The Script of Perspective"

In John Milius' surfing cult classic, Big Wednesday, Chicagoan-Sally, played by Patti D'arbanville; declared the difference between her new Southern California home and the rest of America when she stated: "back home being young is something you do until you grow up.  Here, here it is everything."  Every other year I make my trek to "everything" to attend our annual Christmas party as a member of the Greater Los Angeles Writer's Society.  As a three year member I always anticipate it as a calendar jewel when it gets too frigid at home here in Alabama.  It is a time of book sharing, open mike reads and connections that may just land a book deal, agent connection or your best sitcom spec or screen play getting a look over if possible.

But, this year my adopted west coast community offered me something so much more intrinsic.  Sure, I passed all the same haunts such as Venice's Muscle Beach, Pacific Palisades Park, Venice Proper and Santa Monica Pier; I had visited as an eleven year old with my dad and brother so many summers ago.  True to form even taking a full body dip in the world's largest swimming pool.  In summer it is chilly enough.  In December it turns you as blue as the smurfs you used to watch on Saturday mornings as a child.  But, wetsuits and care were out the window as I knew it was a weekend that would bring what this town eventually brings to everyone.  A lesson that can change perspective if one hears loud enough.

Air BNB was the wonderful service that kept me from making  the same seedy, over priced Sunset Boulevard mistake I had made two years before.  So, honoring another Tinsel Town cliché I slept on someone's foldout.  Candace and Zack, a young married couple both from Las Vegas, had moved into a bungalow off of California Avenue in Santa Monica.  True to a script only written by Hollywood they met after they had moved to town, not back home.  They both shared a love for film production, particularly slanted toward the horror genre.  After showing me five minute Tarantino style vignettes via You Tube of their project "Sandwich Head." I showed a vignette I had starred in, made to cheer up children and drive away any chance of me ever finding a well balanced wife, it did not make Cannes.  Zack surprised me with the information that Candace was the actual producer. Surprising, in that she spent most of her week cultivating "everything" by gardening, making medieval novelty items and producing ghost tours all over town.  Zack, of course bartended in Venice Beach while not in production.   How did he or especially she have the time.  In reality they really did not!  But, somehow made it.  A life so LA!  A life on the surface that appeared exasperating.  A life, that by taking a closer look was exactly what Sally had described in Big Wednesday.

With rented bike in tow I finally made my way to Abbott-Kinney library in Venice.  I read my short story about southern life featuring childhood vacation jaunts on the Florida panhandle, and about a boy and his father swimming out into the Gulf of Mexico to encounter manhood.  One based off of my experiences with my family.  On the way back to Santa Monica, I took the beach path past all the things I may have observed with my father and brother that July morning so many years before.  Squelching the temptation to speed up I stopped, slowed down.  Because like Zack and Candace, I was learning about this place.  I was heeding the lesson that here, it is EXPERIENCE over VERDICT.  And while VERDICT is a goal, especially for those in the "Industry," it always answers to PROCESS.  That process being creativity is the ends.  No matter who approves or disapproves.  Expression and illustrating it in ways the rest of America sees as mundane, can be carried out during the most minute obligations in life.  And loving that expression so much it brightens the shade of ordinary. It being the purpose why you do the mundane and like Zack and Candace and do it to exhaustion.

As I write this piece here snowed in at Midway Airport in Chicago, I already see a part of Zach and Candace in what bleeds out in the present.  Now, a logic to complain, has transformed into a session of ingenuity.  Eight more hours of waiting alone has offered fortuity.  A willingness to know how we can take a little bit of Hollywood into our customary.  For with southern syrupy accent I left Him with humidity.  A southern sinew so actual it comes on garb.  He, that being Hollywood, left me with reflection of what Sally said.  I hope as I sit here, Chicago gets it? I hope the rest of America gets it?  Because being alive here, it is EVERYTHING!  EVERYTHING should now stand for ANYWHERE!  It should now stand for ANY AGE!  City of Angels I will be back soon!