Here Comes Your Man

 

I need a hard reset.

A trip into the woods sounds like bliss right now. I miss my old cabin out in god’s good nowhere and the isolation. I am isolated now, just in a different way where I am surrounded by people, most of them good, but part of me aches for the past, or the future to hurry up and start. Anything but this limbo I am in. I do miss the good times with Panda and my girls. Hamilton was home for a while, but I don’t want to go back there.

I came here with purpose and I am craving him.

If I look back to see where I’m homesick for it’s the time spent alone in the quiet. Sunbathing naked on the porch, the hummingbirds having endless aerial acrobatic dogfights with the bees, the dogs lounging, and good work…like stacking wood and mowing the lawn and the endless playlists. Yes, this.

But that isn’t what I meant to talk about exactly. I do tend to wander off topic.

I’ve watched one movie since I got here.

Silver Linings Playbook.

In my tiny room there is only a tiny tube tv with no HDMI port, so it is laptop or nothing.

Last week when the reality of what I had done hit me like a fucking freight train I cocooned in my room and tried to regroup.

I needed a happy ending. Or to remember they exist.

What I got reminded of, and realized I was lacking, was signs.

When I cannot control what is happening to me (even if I did this to my damned self) I get superstitious.

I think anyone who works in any kind of industry that is based on randomness for money, it becomes a thing. I have a lucky bandana. Little rituals before work. Sometimes they work sometimes they don’t. What it really boils down to is that I am on my hustle or I am not, doesn’t matter what rings I am wearing or what color the bandana I am sitting on is.

But there is another side to that coin.

What it comes down to is rituals and signs.

When the body goes through a traumatic accident, like mine did, all muscle memory is reset to zero. Except when a certain song plays and I sit up like a meerkat and laugh at myself for thinking Jesus is coming.

An old portent triggered a gleeful response years later.

Not actual Jesus. I have been handing out nicknames to people for as long as I have been out in the world. And once, I knew a man we called Jesus.

Music jogs my muscle memories.

I now have YouTube rabbit holes, where I tumble down and find new things, wonders to behold. And alternatively I have playlists saved from varying points in my life.

It’s been a constant stream of Lords of Huron, Ben Howard, Kaleo and Lumineers lately.

Meet Me in the Woods, Take Me Back to the Night We Met and Promise on repeat.

But I needed something different.

In my nostalgia, I clicked on an old list. Took me back to the first time we went to Florida. I came home from that trip and I was free. And that was the beginning.

But it went even further back.

Somewhere in between the new things I had found was an old gem.

Here Comes Your Man, by the Pixies.

My tired little brain instantaneously thought “Jesus is coming.” And I laughed out loud.

You see dear readers, many lifetimes ago, I had a crush on the boy we called Jesus.

And well before we had little GPS’s in our pockets and Facebook check ins and everyone knew what everyone else had for lunch or how they felt about politics or knew what their dogs were doing at any given moment, I had psychic flashes and ‘signs’ about this thing or that boy.

I used to go to a bar called the Dance Cave religiously every Wednesday. My friends were there, the music was amazing and it was kinda like church. I felt weird if I didn’t go. I would see my people, confess my sins, sing, dance and just feel better after. And sometimes Jesus was there.

Not every Wednesday mind you. Just every time the Pixies were played. That song specifically. The guitars riff would kick in and I would instantaneously be on high alert. Head bobbing up and down, watching the door. And Every. Single. Time (but once) at some point, there he would be. Jesus. And it was good amen.

We were having a conversation last night outside the strip club about religion. And the usual points were made about imaginary authority figures and mass population control. Old Testament god versus New Testament god. But when it came down to ‘why did we ever come up with religion in the first place’ I knew the answer. Before science we had no idea why sometimes the earth would shake or the sun would go out in the middle of the day. So we invented beings even bigger and more terrifying than those phenomenon to explain why the world gets weird sometimes.

Ritual is the same thing. One time a girl fell into a volcano and it finally rained after a long dry spell so every year to bring the rain, toss in another virgin to appease the gods.

Personally? I can google anything I don’t understand. I was never much one for churches. I do pray, but in my own way.

When things aren’t going exactly my way, I pray a little harder and try to look for signs.

Logical me knows there has to be something bigger than all this. Not a vengeful god whose stomach rumbles and refuses to make rain until he gets fed.

And if there were sacrifices to be made, good god I have made them.

I leapt into the volcano willingly.

There is a wait so long
You’ll never wait so long

Here comes your man

(The Pixies)