The Horizon

Six hours in a car and a Mormon funeral.  "Stay away from the shrimp," I told my mother, but she didn't listen.  "They're from Costco," my cousin said.  "They have the best shrimp.  They know how to season them."  There were three small tables set up with my aunt's ashes, a back scratcher, some bingo tubes, a trifold of snapshots, and some doilies.  My aunt's daughter had to write the eulogy.  She has never written anything in her life, I'm guessing.  She was daunted. A church Duke, an older fellow who had known my aunt's father and mother, read it.  He had to ad lib a bit.  Still, it came out funny, a laundry list of things about her life cobbled together without much cohesion.  I got a kick out of The Duke.  He had a low, halting voice with a country boy gravitas in it.  He seemed to get a kick out of everything even though it was a funeral.  He'd seen plenty.

There were hymns to sing which were very, very long.  My mother quite liked that.  I have not been to church since I was twelve, so I didn't know the hymns.  It was all quite anthropological to me.  The Deacon who led the funeral proceedings held forth with many empty cliches about Jesus and the afterlife to bolster the grieving.  He got lost in his own arguments, but I'm sure I was the only one who noticed.

Afterwards, gathered around a small table of prepared food, people ate in awkward reverence beneath the many pictures of a very white Jesus.  Here he was being baptized by Anglo John.  There he was talking to children while holding a lamb.  My second cousin--my aunt's granddaughter--and her friend were dressed up like hookers.  Player, another second cousin, couldn't quit commenting about it. "She just drove home today from a big rave in the city.  She got her lip pierced while she was there."  He had brought an old girlfriend from a few years ago who I was enamored of back then.  Now, I barely recognized her.  Her own garb was not far off the hooker mark, either.  I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't quit trying to look up her short dress as she sat precariously in a folding chair with a plate of Costco shrimp balanced on her knee.

I spent most of my time with another second cousin's child, a three year old boy with hair almost to his shoulders.  He seemed quite bright for three though I am no expert on this.  But I get along better with kids than almost anybody you've ever met.  They just like me.  And so I found some Smurfs in a picture of a Christmas present in the margins of a family album.  I picked them up very carefully in my two hands so that they couldn't get away.  He was fascinated and happy.  I invited him to look into a small gap I made between my thumbs and wiggled my little finger around inside the dark hollow.  He jumped back.  "Did you see him?" I asked.  He clapped his hands and laughed yes.  "Here," I said, let me put him in your hands.  Hold them close."  And then suddenly--Boom!--just like that, the Smurf got away and flew back into the picture.  "Did you see that!" I asked him, and of course he did.  We played the game for awhile, getting that Smurf out of the box and then sending him back, after which he and I were best buddies.

Driving home, my mother said her belly was gurgling.  "What did I tell you about the shrimp?" I asked.    "They were alright," she said in a mean voice holding her hand low on her stomach.  "Call me tonight and tell me how good they were," I said.  "Mmmm."

And now I'm home and things seem strange, if I can say that any longer for by now strange is the new norm.  Whatever it is, it is mine alone and no one else's.  I am alone with the thing in the night and in the early morning in the dark when it wakes me.  It stays with me through coffee as the sun comes up and reminds me that it is there from time to time at the factory.

I've decided that I have to slow down.  I can't drive at this speed any longer.  The tires are thin, the steering is loose, the brakes are worn.  I've quit scheduling shoots in the studio.  It sits empty most of the time.  Driving with my mother yesterday reminded me that I have not been around to look at things for a very long time.  My interests have grown too narrow.  What fills my inbox is mostly spam reports, criticism, and advice.  I used to be more catholic in my tastes.  I will walk, I tell myself.  I will walk and walk and walk until something comes to me.  There has been little in life that walking has not cured.  Walking away from one thing is walking to another.  And there it is.  I must not be afraid to look at the horizon.