The Watchtower Is Empty

In the hardest times, I cling to a certain few things for inspiration. After Juliet’s melanoma diagnosis, and I realized the time for me to “be strong” during her long, slow semi-recovery from the car accident had just been extended indefinitely, my soul was dizzily clutching a guard rail for dear life while its vision was blackening at the corners.

That was Friday, October 6^th. The next day, I had pulled into a quiet part of the parking lot next to the Pflugerville Tinseltown USA movie theater to change clothes after a gig, somehow staving off a panic attack. Anyone who knows me knows that I live for October. But right there, at the first weekend, all interest evaporated. My proverbial taste buds went numb to pumpkin spice. I have blogged about the way I used the score to Interstellar to get me through the worst of the breast cancer and the car accident aftermath, but I surprisingly didn’t touch that soundtrack this time. Hm. “This time.” How many more “times” will there be? Anyway, I turned my attention to all the personal aspirations, unfulfilled goals, and broken promises of Kansas City. Let me explain.

I lived in KC from September 2006 to April 2008, but I am not going to synopsize all that happened there in this blog post. The point is, there is an image I have, a self-image, that has been frustratingly abstract these past years. Though I’ve passed through there many times in a hurry, the last time I visited was on my way moving down here to Texas. March 2010, and before that, December 2009. This means nothing to you. I know.

The city itself has transformed. I left KC when the Power & Light District was only under construction. I haven’t even seen it. And the Indomitable Herr Vogler has since moved to Wisconsin, just to spite me for the summer of 2010 I lived there. Bastard.

But leaving Kansas City is something of a defining chapter for me. I never felt like I quite achieved the goals, the vision, that I had from that time. I spent a long time trying to move back there, until Juliet came along. My good friend Dean Yzon, the Reverend, the Asian Cowboy, is at the heart of this riddle. The ambitions we had back then, the many things I’d sworn I’d come back to do since then. Kansas City was a strange time for me. It was right after grad school, when I was carving a niche for myself in the world. I had freedom, though I was unknowingly damned to flail my arms against an economic crash with a shit resume in a soon-to-be-flooded-with-overqualified-applicants in the job market. I was bearing a stack of chips on my shoulder from BGSU that I swear to all that is violent will one day end in a lightsaber duel with me and Dr. Lillios in a field of lava. My God, it is impossible to succinctly encapsulate such a significant chapter of my biography for you here, but I am trying not to bore you.

Right. The parking lot. Saturday. The sun was struggling to peek through the ambivalent cloud patterns. And I put in the soundtrack to Halo 4. I spent my tip money on a bottle of Scotch and gin, anticipating the sea change that was to come. Instead of my beloved Oktoberfest beer to pair with horror movies, I relegated that fraction of the budget to Scotch. Got to go hardcore, class it up, and be an adult all at the same time. The gin? I will explain the significance of gin later. Actually, I’ll probably forget by the end of this blog post, and this paragraph will be a red herring. But it has everything to do with Dean, Tomfoolery’s on 47^th Street in Kansas City, and Jason Bourne.

Ten years ago, in Kansas City, I was trying to make something of myself. I was forced out; the city chewed me up and spit me out on financial grounds. I was disadvantaged before I even began there, but an outstanding ER bill and my Saturn’s transmission screwing me over conspired to force me into a weird situation involving free rent in exchange for part-time live-in personal assistance with a quadriplegic lawyer. Then the other two guys helping moved out simultaneously, blah blah blah.

At the time, I thought October 2007 would just be a delay to my grand plans. I was seriously involved with the South KC Shotokan dojo, and September 2007 has gone down in history as my peak physical condition. Dean and I had our own dreams for networking, MMA, and creative collaborations. I was active with Metro Christian Fellowship and a member of a Life Group thereof. Of course, even back then, I felt like I didn’t quite fit. The Promised Land I sought was not to be found. I have much more to say about that, perhaps in a future blog post. This is hard enough to get through as it is.

Lost glory? Sure, that is part of it. But not the focus here. In the tumultuous moment of dreading more cancer, I was not thinking about that. I was thinking about how to “man up” for what matters. The discipline I have learned. The importance of devotion, diligence, perseverance, and… I guess, clarity. Somewhere out there, Sensei Eric Banks is oblivious to the pedestal I have put him on. How to shed the shackles of distractions and come back to a juncture when I was focused on giving meaning to my relationships as well as my place in the world. I don’t even know how to explain it. I am grasping at straws here. This blog post is a fucking waste of time. Yours.

The last time the one known as the Captain was here in town, last year, we were sitting at Fado Irish Pub and later Halcyon Coffee, talking about our favorite FPS games in the context of our respective timelines as to why we still revere them. I said, for my own experience, nothing will ever hold a torch to Halo 3 and Modern Warfare 2. I am no game critic. It wasn’t a conversation about what games were superior. But in that parking lot, on that dark day, since the crap CD player in our crap Chevy Malibu (since the good car had been totaled) kept rejecting my soundtrack to MW2, I put in Halo 4. To give me spiritual fuel, to focus on goals and glory. To focus on being strong in the face of what seemed like unending fear.

February 2014, the month before getting married: That was the month I was squatting in my soon-to-be-sister-in-law’s guest bedroom. After working and wedding planning, I would end every late night with watching for the first time a YouTube walkthrough of Halo 4, while the soundtrack was waiting for me in the car. That meant something to me. I turned to it again that Saturday. And Halo 5, which has come out since then. Music. Music gets us through this carnival ride called Life that didn’t pass safety inspection. Music becomes allegorical for our struggles and our stories.

As for Modern Warfare 2, that music always brings me back to December 2009. I had just started dating Juliet, which may have seemed preposterous for its long distance. I was at the lowest point in my career status, a substitute teacher living with my parents, but for this glorious, three-day weekend I was king of the world. I was dressed to kill. In fact, “Dressed To Kill” was the title of the blog post about that weekend. I was in town for various, glorious reasons, including martial arts, and Dean and I took advantage to binge-play that game. It is one of those weekends that you don’t realize will become a focal point in your memory years later. Since then, Modern Warfare 2 has always meant something special to me. Something intensely motivating. I can’t describe it. But it is a good thing. A source of strength in the face of long odds. A promise to myself that I will come out of this victorious, and that Dean and I together are unstoppable badasses.

I have listened to it three days straight now.

Not that long ago, I was talking about how I was deliberately revisiting that complicated time period circa November 2007, particularly with the unfulfilled promises to myself, and the blog posts “Sacrifice” and “All Along The Watchtower.”

In “All Along The Watchtower,” I threw down the gauntlet and said, basically, either assist or desist. It was a now-or-never moment, which in retrospect amounted to little more than me shaking my fist at a universe that heartily laughed at my puny display of bravado. I said:

I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore. Either be a badass with me, or stay the fuck out of my way. I mean business. Life isn’t supposed to feel this futile. So how about it? Want to be badasses?

Well, the watchtower is empty. No one is keeping vigil; all have gone over the horizon. But for a scarce few souls, no one would know or care if I returned. Ten years. Ten years of telling myself, “Just get through this rough patch, and I will get back to being what I wanted to be.” I found out, over coffee with Scott R. years ago, that Life Group disbanded shortly after my begrudging departure. Pastor Jim Bailey and a few other characters have moved back to California. I hardly even identify with them anymore anyway, and I want nothing to do with the church these days. But I hold all those people dear in my heart. I am nothing but ancient history, a footnote annals of the South KC Shotokan dojo. Dean and I rarely even communicate. Brad does, but he now lives in the frickin’ Cheesehead state, the mythical paradise of amazing beers that I can vouch for being up to the hype. Everyone’s either gone and/or has forgotten about me years ago. The watchtower is empty.

But, in the hardest times, I remember our talks while walking under that late afternoon sky, on or near Volker Blvd., about how we were going to win.

I just acquired two priceless gems. The unreleased music from Modern Warfare 2 and Black Hawk Down, which stylistically go hand-in-hand. And both have meant a lot to me. Side note for credit’s sake: Black Hawk Down, while rooted in my time at Truman State University, would become my obsession for my exhaustive analysis project at BGSU, December 2004, my first shitty semester there. I had long ago acquired some of the unreleased music to BHD but yearned for the gaps in my collection that, until tonight, have been but a pipe dream.

So, here I sit, thinking of fall ten years ago, and all the frustrations from that time that were never resolved. And how those feelings and those visions have kept me level during the worst of the worst since then. I am 36 years old, not 26. I have a profoundly deep love and loyalty to a lot of people, and so many of you don’t even know it.

Every year, my most earnest declarations of intent to make a glorious return to KC have gone spectacularly, pyrotechnically awry. That is not my point here now, though. Not to lament or to apologize, but to thank. To thank you for being, if only marginally, involved in my inspiration. For my focus, for my courage.

I don’t care about Halloween. If you know me at all, that statement alone should terrify you. For the duration of the catastrophic year of 2017, I am clinging to that which inspires me. I am head-over-heels-in-love with my new pirated music from Modern Warfare 2 and Black Hawk Down. I am drinking Scotch. Single malt, 12-years-old. The cream of the crop. We have to be winners. You and me. We have to. Everyone we love could die tomorrow. Every day is the most vibrantly glorious, most harrowingly difficult, most terrifyingly fragile day of our lives. The watchtower is empty. No one is looking for my return, despite my promises. But I am cherishing the photo of you in the weathered amulet I carry with me.

It gives me strength. It gives me clarity.

I will return to a wasteland strewn with shards of broken porcelain, those shattered promises. Anything that mattered to you ten years ago has been forgotten and deemed irrelevant, but not by me. I may have no companions, but I remember the man I once thought I’d be, of the life I once thought I’d live. I have been lost for so many long years that the watchers have gone on.

But I will return.