call•me•jonah

05.22.07

There are a million things that Jonah wants to say all the time. But he doesn’t. I think he is afraid that people don’t care to hear them. He is certain that his fear makes it so. He knows that his certainty bends reality. So he keeps quiet.

He’s kept quiet for so long about so many things, that they’ve becomes small hills, like grave mounds of thoughts, expressions, joys, fears.

He had the urge last night to hug his grandfather who died last year. It was the first time that he felt the absence of his death. It didn’t matter that he was thousands of miles from his family anyway. It was the realization that he would never hug his grandfather ever again. That that sensation was dead. He lay down in bed and focused on things he remembered until they became almost as vivid as life. His smile, his stoop, his worn arthritic machinist hands, his wink, his limp. When Jonah was little. Real little. Like four maybe. His granddad used to call him his shadow because he would follow him around and watch everything he did. But all too soon Jonah became self-concious of this simple act of homage and stopped doing it. Though for years he still desired to. He remembered these things because he wanted it to hurt.

Memories are beautiful that way aren’t they? That remembering something wonderful can cause pain. For memories are all dead things, absent things. Memories are all ghosts and nothing more. They tell us that what once was now is not.

He wanted to hug someone else’s grandfather. Adopt an old man.

This was an unusual emotion for Jonah. He doesn’t know if other people ever feel this way. As he lay in bed staring at the ceiling, he wished there was someone he could tell this to.

05.22.07


A time always comes when he unwittingly returns to the path. Wandering off into the brush, he had little intention of coming back, though he knew he one day would. For it is his path. Though he did not choose it. It was chosen for him. Stumbling, lost, throught the wilderness, he finds that the ground under his feet, the curves in the path are familiar. He finds the rock where he stashed his gear and picks up where he left off.

In a way he’d rather you not read this. Cause he wants me to be honest about everything. But my voice is public. I can’t live in a vacuum. Alone. I can’t. When I make things I want people to share them. My drawings, music, photos, writings. Perhaps this is the characteristic of our generation. The first generation reared on the internet. Perhaps I am just a desperate exhibitionist.

In a way I’d rather you not read this. Because I know that I will inevitably bend to your expectations. I am a kite and you are the wind. I’d rather be a rock. But I’m not. So I return to Jonah. Or perhaps he has returned to me. He possesses a certain freedom of action that I lack. And he doesn’t know that you are reading this.

I hadn’t intended to meet back up with Jonah for another 7 months or more. But as fate would have it, our paths have crossed prematurely.

I was riding my bike home from work and I saw him fall. Collapse on the pavement. Huddled like a fetus. I wanted to help him but I was afraid. No, wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t know that man.

I entered a coffee shop. Too posh and too well lit. I saw him sitting alone reading a book. A book on politics. He was holding a cigarette aloft in his right hand. A long line of ash dangled from the tip. He didn’t see me as I approached.

“Jonah? What are you doing here? It’s been a long time. How are you? You’re smoking now? Life moving too slow for you? What are you reading?”

He smiled and nodded. Flicked the ash in his empty coffee cup and sat his book down.

Just socially, he said.

I realized he wasn’t the same kid I had left back home. Something was different. Something subtle, something underneath.