Ever Forward

Life comes in chapters, and sometimes those line up with birthdays.  The weeks before my 29th highlight the pages that have been turning in my life lately.

I spent my birthday weekend on a date with Uncle Sam, at one of my last drills with the Virginia Army National Guard. Thanks to him, I’ve spent one weekend a month traveling up or down the Blue Ridge to the armory in Lynchburg (or Bedford or Farmville), explored a bit along the way, spent more time in Blackstone than anyone ever should, been to Georgia, Arkansas, New York, Texas, and New Mexico for training, and worked overseas in Germany, Qatar, and Romania (with stops in 7 other countries on the way).  It’s been a good ride, and I’ve gotten to do and see some cool things, from riding in helicopters to shooting sniper rifles to volunteering at Doha school sports days to hearing Romanian folk songs sung on a Transylvanian patio. 

Along the way, I got to serve in an organization whose history as the Virginia militia precedes both the Army and the U.S., earned its nickname in the Civil War, its motto in the Great War, its fame at Omaha Beach and the Normandy Campaign, and whose blue and grey patch symbolizes the re-union of a fractured America. 

Most importantly, I got to work with some of the best people I’ve ever known, from Iraq and Afghanistan vets to brand-new privates to sergeants who had been NCOs longer than I’d been alive.  On the civilian side, they have been everything from college students to counselors to policemen to mechanics to farmers to cell tower repairmen.  We’ve shared everything for a little while, from stories that will never be told outside of the ranks, to cigarettes under helmets while the sky came pouring down around us, to soggy plates of Army chow.  Thank you for all of that, and everything you’ve taught me.  “29th, let’s go,” “Rally on the Virginians!” and “Ever Forward!”

I spent the week before drill in Greensboro laying down tracks for a new 4-song EP that will also feature my friends Joe and Stacey Rinaldi of the Rinaldi Flying Circus.  Joe is a fantastic arranger and guitar player, and Stacey is a powerhouse singer who reminds me of Patsy Cline.  The songs are based on short stories by Flannery O’Connor, a Georgia author whose works and vision were a revelation to me in college. Kelley Wills, a West Virginia friend whose clawhammer style is what got me to trade in my Marshall amp for a Gretsch banjo, is also a fantastic artist, and she’ll be doing the cover art for the EP's release in early January.

I also submitted my applications for MFA-Poetry programs next fall and the Cambridge English Language Teaching for Adults certificate.  Traveling; working with local students, budding writers, and people transitioning from different backgrounds; and publishing and performing my own poetry and stories, whether on page or on stage, is what I will be doing with this next chapter of my life.

I spent the weekend before Thanksgiving with my family at my Granddad’s east Carolina farm.  The house was loud, and stories and games went long into the night.

Most of my songs are about running away from home and trying to find your way back.  What I’ve learned, though, from this last year and a half overseas, and coming back, and finding love everywhere I went—even filling up the Facebook wall or my cell phone as dear friends from around the world wished me a happy birthday—is that you can find home anywhere you have chosen to love those around you, and have found yourself loved, too.  My heart is full.

Thanks for listening.  Stay tuned for more details and some sneak peaks on the EP, and come hear the music in Leesburg and Berryville this month!

Katabasis

From Ancient Greek: κατάβασις, from κατὰ "down" and βαίνω "go."

"For dust you are and to dust you shall return."

As the red-flushed leaves send the smell of their rot from beneath our feet, it seems fitting to celebrate the dead.   

I am sitting in the same farmhouse kitchen where, five years ago, I first heard that Bonnie Libby died.  She was killed in her sleep by a deep-vein thrombosis—the clot that had formed in her leg during a train trip broke loose, traveled to her brain, blocked a vessel, and burst it.

Bonnie was the first person to trust me as a writer. She was my faculty advisor in undergrad, and she pushed me to edit the literary journal, present at conferences, teach class workshops on meter, and apply to UNC-Greensboro, where she had earned her PhD.  "You're a writer and a teacher, and it's a teacher's school, she said."

When she passed, I flung words at God like lances, and I tossed a grenade into the structure of what I'd grown up believing and let it burn as I walked away. 

Bonnie's death, and the violence of my reaction to it, forced me to face my demons.  I had a lot, but I found that, as I faced and put a name to them, they grew smaller and lost their power, like cockroaches in the light or mold drying up and blowing away.  Songwriting became my exorcism. 

It hurts, and sometimes it feels like dying.  But that's the point.  What looks like death is the beginning of a new life.  All Hallows' Day is placed right after the fall equinox, when darkness starts crawling earlier and earlier across the earth.  You can hear Old Man Winter sharpening his knife and the death rattle of the trees.  But it's a time to rest, and it's the beginning of the arc that turns at Christmas, where it reaches up toward Easter.  Each of these is preceded by the fasts of Advent and Lent.  

Life is a series of little deaths.  Each opens the way to a bigger life.  We sleep at night, and we can't stay kids forever, and you've seen the old men and women who try to stay 21 their whole lives.  Joseph Campbell writes: "The refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative...whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death, a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his Minotaur." 

If you have skeletons in your closet, we all do.  But keep them there, and "what you fear will come upon you."  Pull them out, lay them in the sun, mourn them, then bury the bones.