Too easy for me to get lost in the shuffle of getting from one place to another during the holidays. An appreciation of no other choice probably but driving across the United States is a wonderful way to spend a few days. There is simply no better way to witness the intersection of time and landscape. Everything opens like a slow flower. Burrowing east into the sunrise from deep in the midwest watching the day unfold unto itself and light up a moving world. The empty peace of a solitary semi floating up and over the Alleghenies. The subtle topographical differences between the edge of Iowa and Illinois or Ohio and Pennsylvania. The lazy precision of the light of day burning itself out. Undiscovered clouds. A mewing cat. Silent stolen moments or coughing fits. 

The rental had satellite radio. Never really trucked with it before but I gotta say, did me right. Pretty much rocked three stations: 1st Wave, Backspin, and XMU. All hilarious, all totally satisfying. 1st Wave is basically a post-punk/new wave station that played an awful lot of great great jams like Talking Heads, Talk Talk, Joy Division, and other synth-driven/jangly guitar fare. Backspin plays classic hiphop period. And then there’s XMU which I think stands for XM University to try and call upon the idea of college rock AKA Indie Rock. So it’s the Indie station. Spent a loooooooooot of time here because duh I want to maintain relevance and/or relevant. I kid. Best I can surmise the most popular types of things going right now XMUwise are shitty punk bands, Lana Del Ray, electrochill-ish and power-pop. I’m not saying anything you didn’t already know if you’ve ever listened to the station before. I don’t think I felt out of touch when I was listening and sort of mostly cocking my head askew, at least I hope not. They also folded in a fair amount of indie rock from the last 30 years which was pretty cool. However they do this time slot each day called BLOG RADIO devoted to a different blog where the dude (always a dude) running the blog spins for a few hours. I heard the Brooklyn Vegan, My Old Kentucky Blog, and Hipster Runoff shows during the drive. The only thing I’ll say other than the I could almost feel the hoodie sweatshirts seeping through the speakers coming for my soul was that whoever they have actually speaking the HRO dialogue isn’t very good at it. 

The show playing for the last hour of the drive was devoted to songs from 2002 and 1992 (this being the first week of 2012) and was actually fucking great. The same Jersey highways that opened onto the city, filled with early August heat lightning spilling over onto the GWB were now crisp and ashen in December and announced by every song I can remember listening to when I left the city sometime a decade ago. She Kissed Me (It Felt Like A Hit), The Way We Get By, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Heavy Metal Drummer, Oh!, Untitled #7 (Sigur Ros), Untitled (Interpol), etc. And every other song I can’t remember now would come on and I would instantly hear something about how leaving felt that first time and now here we are ten years later and the soundtrack hasn’t changed a bit and it becomes crystal clear fairly quickly why you stopped listening to ( ) because you were broken yet the Hudson is healing everything—every driven mile and every buried truth— and you are certain it’s precisely because of ( ) or yes maybe the sun searing Jersey just so. All time unspools into a open weave when you drive.  

A giant clock of moments in a family history. My grandfather is the man at the bottom center-left of the table—7 o’clock. His jacket is gloriously large and I can almost feel the misshaped contours of his spine popping out his back. He’s never looked so handsome to me. My grandmother sits one seat away at 9 o’clock. Her face is almost monstrously beautiful and smooth. Lipstick. Hair. Knowing smile and sensible sweater. My mother perched on her lap, tiny fingers clutching at pearls. Blonde. Somewhere close to 11 o’clock, standing in front of the closed door is the cook and live-in maid. I only know her as Kirt. I know she was an amazing cook and gardener. A dear friend to my great-grandmother seated in front of her. I look at my great-grandmother and all I see is the brooch of fur or feathers and the white buttons floating down her dress. Maybe her hair pulled back tightly. I wonder how long it really was? Her husband, my great-grandfather and namesake, sits around 4 o’clock, smug and bowtied. Flanked by his daughters Helen and Martha. For me my major players. 

I look at this picture and I don’t know what to think. I know how I feel. I grew up in that dining room. That house was pure magic for a small boy. Cavernous and warm, built from some deep wooded patch of memory. The house was fucking huge. I remember standing in that dining room seeing the eyes of my family red with the death of my grandfather. My sister shattering a glass sugar bowl onto the floor in front of my grandmother. That stuffed walleye on the wall. The china. The silver salt and pepper shakers. I see my parent’s divorce. I remember the last time I stood inside before the house was sold off to another family. The assorted details of the dining room on Sunset Road strike me in a thousand different moments but coursing through almost every memory is the good fortune of a family built on wealth and privilege. Luck. Hard work. Arrogance or charity. Whatever it was it worked. I see a reflection of a family I am of and love and deny and lament. I see money and fine linen. I see the love of a thousand lives in my great-grandmother’s eyes. The warmth of a shared meal. Bigotry and a bowtie.   

I spoke with my mother and her sister and my sister and our grandmother the other night on Skype. The way we family now. They’re all visiting my sister and mother in Florida and honestly that’s a lot of intense woman in the same room and well I have to drink to grit out 10 good minutes. We’ll never know how but someone made a crack or comment about the folks at OWS and the pointlessness of it all and oh god can you believe the this and that and I snapped. I told them they were being ridiculous and had no idea what they were talking about. I spoke passionately about the importance of respecting the rights of the protesters, how big money has fucked our country, hopelessness as a new normal for most everyone in my generation except the ones brave enough to push back or lucky enough not need to. I’ve never been to any OWS march or moment or park or square anywhere. In fact I don’t even know how I feel about the politics of protest at all anymore. A burning ambiguity cuts across my desire to occupy space for/at OWS but I’ll be damned if the blindness that class affords excuses the feckless comments of family members or pundits or politicians. The whole fucking thing is about class.  

Maybe I’ll only ever be a product of divorce. An impossibility of identification. Divorce forces manic difference upon you without consent. I’m scared  I’ll see the reflection of my great-grandfather’s words in the silver. I’d rather listen than be heard because haven’t I already said too much? What if large groups of people induce an anxiety attack? Is it soft? Are my fears familial or personal or political? But I love turkey? Her lipstick? Teach me. To let it go. Please? Running from the past, devouring a future. Our Golden Wedding November 26, 1952.