Port Arthur (download)

As distant prospects please us, but when near
We find but desert rocks and fleeting air. - Samuel Garth

***

Years ago, I lived in Los Angeles, and when I was done living in Los Angeles, I came back home to the Bay Area. Los Angeles stayed in my bones, however, and I found myself sorely at odds with this end of California.  Something about Los Angeles’ smog and sunshine burrowed inside of me, and functioning in a new place, even one that I had grown up in, seemed impossible.

As you can imagine, re-assimilating myself back into my past life did not take easy.  I nestled myself into a dead-end job, I slowly relearned the old methods of communicating and moving in old social circles, but Los Angeles kept calling me, and I was unable to resist.  

I’d make the 5-hour drive down once-a-month or so, spending three day weekends with the people who knew me best, if only to find myself slowly drudging my way back to the damnable North.  My car radio didn’t work, but that was OK;  I was more than willing to fill the dead air with my sobbing.  I was lamenting that God had misplaced me so;  shaking my fist that life had become so dark and pedestrian for me, while the people I loved were living life to the fullest, half-a-state away.

***

It’s pulling at my feet
Weightless, formless
Demanding that I speak
And make my weaknesses known
It woke me from my sleep
Quiet, I get shaky at the thought

I’m gonna be in Port Arthur tonight
Get out from the shadows and into the light
Into the light

It’s tugging at my legs
Ruthless, shameless
Requesting that I stay
Available at all times
The nights outlast the days
I’m not closing my eyes for anything

My car keys feel like stones
I’m sinking towards your home
I might not ever rise again
I’m cursed with renegade hands
They will not follow my demands
They steer the wheel where the wheel wants to go
…so I breathe slow

Last night I dreamt a dream
Endless, pointless
A loop of you and me
The way we looked long ago
On our hands and knees
Searching, looking for something we can’t see

***

Our narrator doesn’t understand the nature of what draws him to the titular Port Arthur.  We don’t even know what it is that’s tugging at him, so we’ll fill in the blanks with what tugs at us: an addiction, an ex-lover, a rogue wave inside of us that pushes us to self-destruction or self-fulfillment.  It could be negative or positive, it could be physical or emotional, it could be a need or a want, but whatever it is, it’s inside of us.  It calls to us.  It’s a specialized siren call, form-fitted to our fears and our desires.

(I love writing about the concept of helplessness.  We’re taught that we’re to take control of everything, to relinquish nothing, to hold tight the reins and never let go.  Today, let’s revel in what pushes us, what pins us to the details.  Let’s rejoice in the lack of control over our lives - we’ll call it fate, or God, or strange wind, but we’ll know that we’re being stirred to something that we don’t even know about yet.  We’ll find freedom like we’ve never known when we accept vulnerability.)