Of
Such Walls, Humpty Dumpty Knew Not a Thing
Allen Moore
I was back in my hometown for a while, and I felt
the need and the urge to go for a bike ride. So, I borrowed
my dad’s recumbent bicycle, got some warm clothes on,
and put that beast into gear. As I was riding around the city,
or maybe just before that, I realized something. This was a
chance for a reclamation of sorts. I would reconstruct the landscape
of my formative years and release it from its decrepit old lot.
I’d set that feller free. Now, that ain't to say that
the past was bad, or even that it was good. Fettering out a
good or bad dichotomy here just ain’t the point. Man,
if I gave that old landscape a good rowl, it was gonna hoot
‘n holler back even louder! That’s the thing really;
relegating my former experiences to their proper place amongst
those mythic memories of old...to liberate the past and the
present from their taciturn hold on one another.
I’m gonna make this plain and simple, cats.
It wasn't about letting go of the past, or about living in the
present. Nope. It was about giving ‘em both a proper context
and a straight up dose of pure emancipation. you know, settin'
it all down and pickin’ it all up. It was
about settin' it on fire, lettin’ it all burn, and poking
the shes with a stick just to keep 'em going a little bit longer.
So, I was riding around the city and I was listening to Little
Richard on the headphones...that guy
had it down pat; like bloodletting a sea horse. Man, that’s
comprehensive. Riding past familiar places and down those old
familiar streets was a real kick. I hadn’t done that since
I moved out almost five years ago.
I used to ride my bicycle all over this bloomin'
city; up
alleyways, and past cemeteries...anywhere my two beady little
feet and a couple a’ pedals could take me. Now, here I
was riding these streets again, like a gun shot wound to a can
of worms. It wasn’t as though I’d never return to
visit my parents again, or as though I didn’t want to.
The opposite was really the thing. I’ve found a peace
and an energy in that place now, with its Golgothan grimness
fading into a mere blunder. And although the streets were familiar,
things had changed and they weren’t as they’d always
been in my memories.
In fact, the city had constructed a huge wall
along the side of the road in order to keep the highway sounds
out of the surrounding neighborhoods. But in my mind, that’s
reality, isn’t it? If you live by the highway, then yer
gonna and yer supposed to hear those damned cars rushing by.
Why would they erect a gigantic concrete monstrosity just to
keep a few sounds offa' people’s backs? I think the wall
serves another purpose, one so devious that it bears particular
mention here. It seems to me that the wall is really a method
of preventing drivers from seeing the city’s neighborhoods
as they fly by in their death boxes.
That wall keeps ‘em from having to see the wreckage, from
having to look at homes destroyed by the never ending expansion
of their precious highway. That’s the wall, all grimace
and fists; dauntless in its shark-toothed appetite and devilish
composure. That thing'll suck you dry like a concrete vampire;
drinking your neighborhood clean of its life’s blood and
leaving it for dead.
That wall’s just another way for them to
cage us in like rats, food for a stomach bent on progress. Yeah,
the all, it’ll keep the sounds out all right, and a helluvalot
more than that’ll come raging down that stream. I rode
my dad’s borrowed bike past the wall and on down some
hill. Boy, I flew down that hill like nobody’s business.
I was reclaiming the asphalt, tearing up those streets for permanent
cultivation. I passed Saint Mary’s hospital, where my
mom sometimes works, I passed my old high school, where I got
kicked offa’ the school newspaper for drawing a derogatory
comic about the vice-principal, I passed the old Shakey's pizza
place, man they had a damn good buffet lineup, I flew down Broadway
past all the old downtown haunts, I passed the movie theater
where I worked and dreamed, I passed the spot where Broadway
Records used to be, now turned into some turd-log coffee shop,
and I flew past all the rest of it too.
It was like Armstrong returning to the moon; only
there
wasn’t any moon-lander, and there weren’t no moon
rocks to bring back home and show the press. Plus, I’d
actually been back to my hometown many times before, but not
like this; not with axes and trees and metaphors. And it wasn’t
just about the ax and the tree, it was the whole thing, stirred
up in a pot, set to boil, passed right through a rusty strainer
and onto yer plate. That’s the essence of the thing. I
rolled down hills and right through neighborhoods, realizing
what it never meant and what it truly means. As a kid, I came
straight outta' the northeast side, while others came from institutionalized
neighborhood ordinances, places
filled to the brim with suburban undercurrents of rage and self-destructive
vanity.
And that’s why it was as it was, all throughout
high school, ‘till graduation; when life beyond came like
a fresh egg from some disgruntled chicken at the back of the
coop. But the others, they never knew about relevancy, or even
irrelevancy for that matter, and that’s why they became
“others” instead of “us.” Those blokes
in school who were too stuck-up for their own good, and too
casual for the likes of madmen and saints. They maintained a
distance all their own. But when I or we or they entered concurrent
spheres, things broke down, things got shuffled up and thrown
about. Insults flew as we took them upon ourselves, weary with
disdain for the smugness of those so-called others. We felt
their cold sick embraces. Those fisticuffs in the halls and
coerced back-office apologies left us with nothing and gave
the others a false sense of meaning in their tv-tray lives.
But now I know what it means, never what it meant,
but what it really means. And it’s a memory and that’s
fine by me. I rode around the school’s parking spaces
and cut into the street. I went up the hill, said a little prayer,
and flew through an old drugstore parking lot. I tasted the
swift scent of pizza in the air as I rode past that drugstore
and back out into the street. Through dead ends and new streets,
past concrete walls and road construction Alamos, I found my
way home. On the way, a redneck suburbanite drove by in his
big ol’ truck, punching his horn like a jackass, hating
my emancipation. So be it. There are ignorant people everywhere,
but here, back in the city of my birth, it ain’t even
a thing. Not now, not right this moment. So I let it slide,
blew that steam right off, and headed home to the house of my
childhood.
When I got there, my dad had a fire goin’
in the backyard and he was sitting in a lawn chair. I ate some
yogurt and my mom made some popcorn. We sat and ate and talked,
and when the fire drew near to a close, we chucked some more
wood on there to keep it rustlin’ for just a bit longer.
My dad lit off some fireworks in the drive-way. They were loud,
like Chesterton at full blast...and you best dance like the
dickens, cause that display is faster ‘n blazes and it’ll
catch you right in the moment with a smile and a glossy eye.
The last time I’d been home had felt interminably
strange to me; I had a certain feeling about the city with all
of its familiarities and changes. I don’t know what it
was exactly, ‘cause I can’t quite put a finger on
it. The thing is, it doesn’t really seem to matter anymore.
I’ve finally set it all down and the distinction is clear
in my heart.
Some kind a’ transformation took place and
now I now, now I have a notion of sorts.
My recent return to the place of my birth wasn’t
like coming out of a tomb into the light of day, nor was it
like the opposite. Light and tombs aren’t what I’m
getting at here, that’s not it. And I’m not tryin’
to imply that it was beyond anything either, like some kind
of belabored transcendence. Nope. It’s just plain old
simple King’s English here. I found a way to reclaim that
space, to consecrate those city streets, those sights and sounds
and mindsets and all the rest. I was given the opportunity and,
Lord willing, I let it fly; like mold ripped from some petrified
loaf of wheat. Rip that stuff away, toss it out, butter that
thing up, toast it nice ‘n golden, and gobble it down.
I feel at peace now with my hometown in a way that I never really
had since I left. I understand some things now, got some things
straightened out, rendered proper. I had a nice oment
hanging with my parents by the fire and flying down streets
I’d left for dead. And I finally said a truthful farewell
to my disconcerting spoonful. From here on out, when I return
to that place, to that city, I’ll rest easy, knowin’
I’m there to see my folks and that’s that. It’s
all I need to understand and all that I care to know.
....
Allen Moore is a filmmaker
extraordinaire who resides in
Minneapolis, Minnesota. He keeps it real by chillin' with his
homeboys up in the heezy fosheezy.
