it's 12:54 am, on May 01, 2002 - home from blessed tennessee.
~
I have to make an entry. The problem is that, while I have a lot to say, most of it I've written down already, either in a long, airport-letter, or I said on the I-75, or I thought to myself. As such, the things I have to say have dwindled. I'm going to try and describe my trip, anyway, but there's no way to describe it, not really. I mean, how do you describe that most perfect act, of going? But you try.
Tennessee was very green, and lush, and beautiful. It was easy to see why people spent their lives there and have done for hundreds of years. The drive down to Orlando was hot, and full of highway-mentality; quiet, staring out the window, the zen of driving. Bugs splattered on the windshield, and mated on the body of Al's white nissan. The Rand McNally road atlas got a good workout. The I-75 wound through southern Tennessee, through Chattanooga and into Georgia; through Atlanta and Macon and south Georgia, and into Florida itself. Deciduous trees. The sun. Endless music on the stereo. Billboards, thousands of them, advertising the Orlando tourist bureau, Georgia peaches, topless bars, Baptist churches, hotels and motels and restaurants and truck stops. A hand-painted sign on the side of the road said "Jesus saves!" three times. Another one said "repent". On and on and on.
Don't get me wrong. There's nothing romantic about the open road. It was hours of hard, hot driving. Al did it all on the way there. I drove some on the way back. We got to the hotel, checked in around eleven at night, and we'd left her parents' place at about quarter to noon. There were some akward pauses, some places where in person, we didn't know how to fit.
But we got to Orlando all right, and we took a walk barefoot among the palm trees. Al had found a place right near the Magic Kingdom for really cheap -- god knows how -- and we went for a walk in Orlando's tourist area. The area we were in, near the East gate of Disneyworld, was very odd. It's full of hotels, and bright garish neon signs advertising water parks and ferris wheels and mini golf, like a New Vegas just for kids, the same as Anaheim. But it also has a slew of abandoned storefronts, strip malls with trashy dollar stores littering route 192, and boarded up grocery stores. Al called it the theme park ghetto.
The next day was six hours in the Florida sunshine, getting baked and boiled and burned to a crisp, only to buy nsync tickets from a scalper because they didn't release any more floor seats. We went to the show. Highlights included: Justin and Joey coming onstage with P. Diddy as a surprise to everyone -- Justin's face was lit up like a christmas tree. The show was. It. I don't even know. Anyone who's seen it can attest, there aren't words.
After the encore, and once the house lights came on, the guys came back onstage and brought their whole entire crew onstage with them, to say thank you and such. It was emotional. It was intense. JC and Joey hugged for like, a whole minute. JC hugged most of the crew. People were waving, and getting into the moment. It was a sight, indeed.
Al and I looked at each other, in amazement, and pushed closer together to get out of the venue, into the car and back into peace.
Driving home was relatively uneventful, save a few mishaps and Al telling me this idea she has for a story. The last line of it, which I'd heard before on a postcard, goes, "For this is the occupation of angels, to move and keep moving. And it is quite a lot like the occupation of humans."
She tells the story much better than I ever could, so I won't tell it, but I will say this: that line was going through my head on the flight from Detroit to Seattle, and then I had a dream. My mother and my uncle were running down the street with milk cartons, racing each other, and my cousin was watching and Rob and I were laughing so hard we couldn't even duck out of their way. That's secondary to what comes next, which is something to do with JC. The only thing I remember is the line, "Heroic. He-roic. What does it mean? The act of being human. He." Or something like that. He said it, very clearly, and in the dream, my mind repeated the line several times for emphasis.
I went to Tennessee hoping for something that could push me. Ever since I went to the Portland show, which was the first of this tour, I've been in this horrible place. I can say now, "I have seen the first and the last of them." And this tour was hard on me, I gotta say. But it almost feels like I was shoved through the wash and I'm out the other side. I'm wrung dry -- but I'm clean. I'm out the other side.
There's more, there's always more, but that's enough for here. The last, the most important maybe, is this. I wrote to Mel, "I don't regret going. Not that I ever do." Because this is what I've learned, in this whole spiritual cleansing cum nsync concert conglomeration: whatever you do, if you do it from love, it's not wrong. You just gotta do your thing.
~
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moving truck dilemma - October 28, 2015
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bruise - June 29, 2015
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