The Things I've Carried

This bag is heavy ... I weighed it once, it came up to 20 pounds, a duffle bag, polyester, 100% polyester.  I found that out when I was pricing it once, wanted to know how much this bag costs, not my bag, I gotta’ replace this bag.  I can’t return it the way it is, I used it, a brand new bag, overused it to the point of it being a brand old bag, so I’ve gotta replace it.  How much is this bag, had to search for the bag online, you know, the internet, Google it. 

Borrowed the bag once because the bag I had, was torn to shreds.   When a person writes, he sometimes exaggerates; that exaggeration is the way he perceives it, not the way things are but the way things are is how he perceives it.  So I had a bag before this bag, it was a green Bally's duffle bag, I carried lots of things in this bag.  Originally it was a gym bag -- originally as if it became something else; sometimes when a person writes, he doesn't just think of a thing as it is, but as it becomes over time.  My green gym bag, the duffle bag was a bag I bought at the gym -- used it for gym stuff and then I used it to carry other stuff.

I carried a laptop and documents, I carried personal care items when going on a trip, I carried my children’s pampers, and toys and other items of interest to the younglings.  I carried the love I had for them, I carried the hopes and aspirations I had as a professional, I carried the desires I had for personal fitness and an "oh so wow physique". 

It was a gym bag though and as I carried it from New Jersey to New York from Manhattan to Queens from Queens to Brooklyn; with it was carried the dust and dirt from one borough to the other; from one state to the next; from trains to buses, from buses to railways, and once in a while, from railways to planes -- the things a person carries is a kind of answer to the question that nobody asked.  Who is this guy?  Maybe nobody asked because nobody cares about the answer; but that's not true; the kids cared about the answer -- Where are you daddy?  They asked on a regular.  Daddy always gave a response in return that did not make much sense.  How could they understand that I was at work, and was doing it for them?

The things I carried in that green bag, once upon a time, brand new along with brand new print outs of those important documents and brand new toys that the kids couldn’t get enough of.  The laptop was not so brand new, but had brand new programs on it that would match my brand new ambitions and help me get the work done.  The gym clothes that it had in there at one time were brand new too.  The gym clothes didn’t get that worn in always in use kind of wear and tear, but that ignored, not focused on, still kind of new, but kind of used, ignored kind of – I’m just old and forgotten about -- feel to it. 

The toys got used and then forgotten, forgotten in a bag, a duffle bag where too many days went by without them being completely delivered, so the objects, of affection, the toys for the tots, just ground their faces and plastic elbows and obtuse shapes into the fabric of the bag, reshaping the roundness of the duffle bag into a bag of ridges and broken dreams.  Its etched right there in the polyester.  I think its polyester; the new bag is polyester, so I think the old one was too.  When a person writes, he sometimes assumes things, assumes that one thing is what another thing was, and sometimes does this in reverse.  He assumes that one thing was what another thing is, its easier that way to see the world in a kaleidoscope of confusion that he will later make sense of when it makes no sense to even ponder on it, let alone make sense of it.

So here I was, traveling to Philadelphia, with a ratty tattered green duffle bag.  Brandi was kind enough to lend me hers.  And so I moved half of the important stuff over to the bag, the other half remained in the ratty tattered bag.  Its funny how sometimes everything seems important until its time to make the cut, and so some things are important and others just not as important, or maybe the others are even more important but just not right now.  Like the McDonalds toy that was lodged in the corner of the bag for my son, it was more important than the items that made the cut, but just not right now.  Who in Philly would understand that this little “free” action figure was my son’s favorite toy, a toy that I fantasized about giving him when he was three months old and in the infirmary, where every single breath that he took could be his last.  He was born two pounds and nine ounces.  He was small enough to fit into my back pocket. 

The laptop in my old duffle bag weighed more.  He was frail and ugly and undesirable.  He spent all his time under an ultraviolet light with tubes in his nose and in his mouth and down his throat and in his arms and little frail legs.  His belly looked empty, and in fact it was – he wouldn’t eat – that’s what the doctors and nurses and janitors said.  When a person writes about the things that he has heard, he may color outside of the lines, he may say that folks said things and those folks weren’t even there, but it felt like they were there.  It felt like they knew his secret, his shame and his pain – the boy wouldn’t eat – even the janitor knows.  That’s not something you can change Superman, it’s on him.  And I was mad at her, his mother, Chevon, why, I don’t know.  I felt afraid for her, weaker than her, protective of her, confused for her and in adoration of how she was able to do the things that needed to be done, make those runs back and forth to the hospital, pump milk from her breast using a device that to me seemed part pleasure part pain.

 Pleasure in the mechanical sucking of her nipple and release milk that had her breast swollen and over-firm, pain in the fact that it was not her son, her only son sucking on that nipple for nourishment, pain in that he may reject her milk upon delivery, much like the children may reject the toys that I brought for them in that old duffle bag, toys not loved any more--  out grown and forgotten.  And so she carried this milk from Queens Village to Long Island Jewish hospital, night after night after night.  Her son in an incubator raspily sucking on air hoping to repeat the action several times in the hour.  His skin discoloured from lack of nourishment, his arms and legs frail.  “He looks like a little monkey” his father said, in a way being candid, in another separating himself from the pain.  When a person writes, he sometimes tells the story in such a disconnected fashion that you, the reader, may think of it as being objective  and something to admire, however, if you look closely, you can see the pain, no, feel the pain of the writer, a person wishing to hold and care for his child, a person so desperate to take his son home that he begins “casing the joint” for escape patterns – thinking how his son’s foot is so small that he could probably slip the security band off, how he checked the schematics of the sensors around the hospital ward, and how he figured that if he put the tracking band in another crib, it would be hours before they knew that his son had broken free of their prison. 

He would hide his son in his hooded sweatshirt, and drive slowly to his In-laws and his son would get better, and stronger, and would live a regular life, and they would play catch and would have talks about girls and how to “snag them and bag them” and how to handle finances and how to excel in school and at work and how to become a pinnacle of society and how to be a father and teach and nurture and how to be a husband and teach and nurture and learn and choose a good woman. 

But he is in the writer’s hand, not hands, hand, small and fragile and looking like a little monkey and won’t eat and is failing.  They said to the writer once that his son wouldn’t make it and he looked at them with the same obstanance that his mother looked at the doctors when they told her that her son would be retarded based on too much oxygen lost to the brain during his birthing.  He’s going to make it.  That’s the only thought that the writer had in his mind at the time.  It’s funny how a writer can talk about himself in the fourth person, a writer talking about a writer who is talking about himself.  Perhaps that is indicative to the guilt and the hurt, and the pain of a situation where he watches his only son die.

The boy didn’t die though, the story takes a happier trail, where he lives and suffers, and prevails and becomes to all who can see a natural normal child, even if only relatively so.  His son carries his father’s name, first and last, but the first name is spelled just a little different so that he may grow and excel under his own identity without carrying junior affixed to his name. 

This bag is heavy, the new bag that I have to replace because it is overused, worn, tired and in need of replacement.  Brandi gave me this bag, to hold, to use but not to be used up.  I have to replace this bag.  A Free promotional item from Hugo Boss, I knew that and knew it more upon research on finding the bag online, googling it so that I could replace it.  It looks like “the sun never sets on the British empire” even in the sale of free commodities as the UK was the only place where I could find a replacement bag.  It’s funny how a person tries to replace a thing with a thing as if those things were ever equal in any way.  It serves further to humor when a person tries to equate and compare two items in the same genre and realizes after much comparison and analysis and questioning and posits that most things, even in the same genre are not comparable.  Such as her and her, but I won’t get into that here.  Too much to write, too much to carry.  I carry this bag to the School of New Resources, to the College of New Rochelle, and in this bag I have books that in no way resemble those of CTU –Colorado Technical University, that in no way resememble those from Lehman College, that in no way resememble those of Bronx Community College.

The books the bag carries are unique syndications of a story that was aired a long time ago, when a young man gave birth to a seed, to a child at the ripe old age of 16.  Where he lied to the mother of his child, not on purpose but rather allowed a lie to live, that he was an older gentleman.  What was one lie compared to another.  He thought he had it all figured out, but in truth, figured it out as he went along.  Sometimes that’s what a woman needs from a man, even when that woman is a girl and that man is a boy -- to know that somebody has it all figured out.  A lie?  A stretch of the truth.  Sometimes that’s what a writer has to do, he has to take bits and pieces of the truth and stretch it out in a hustler’s fashion.  He as to take nickel bags of weed, 20’s of cocaine, a dub of heroine and stretch those sales into Similac and pampers, and French toast outfits, and rent and Con Ed and food and his and her clothing and transportation and phone bills and cable TV and little shopping sprees.  He has to use what he’s got to get what he wants, and has to smile with an internal frown, be strong with internal weakness, be sure with inward confusion. 

He has to look at a little child while still a child and decide all at once to stick his hand into the chest of the world he lives in, grip its heart and squeeze it in a pattern that he has chosen -- so that every pulse of the street sings to his song.  The rhythm of the street mocks his beat, and all of this must align with the twinkle of a star, a star that he saw in the twinkling of his first born’s eye.  She was cute, no gorgeous.  Beautiful in every way.  Thick and fat, just right, perfect complextion, even her similac breath was a pleasant scent.  Her hair was sligltly curled, she was three months old, her clothes fit just right, and her roundness, excentuated by her pampers made her perfect.  If God himself were to shed a tear and that droplet would fall to the ground, my first born daughter would have emerged from the earth, his most beautiful flower. 

                If she were a flower then I would have been the dirt from which she grew, filthy and necessary, everywhere, but upon close inspection, nowhere at all, just a spec, engulfed by the vastness of the world; scattering with every sigh of the wind, fighting my way downward, to recede to the ground again.  I covered everything and was in everything, I was necessary.  I was the stuff that men and women are made of and return to.  I was the mass that separated oceans and rivers and the stuff that natural dams are made of.  I was the stuff that got under your shoe, and made a mess of the carpet when you came home from work and your wife would yell at you, and you would scowl at her.  And your kids would call your name “Daddy!” and you would smile and hug and spin them and kiss them and your wife wouldn’t be so mad about the carpet or the scowl anymore. 

I was the stuff that was necessary on this earth, for the earth to be called earth, I was her world.  A writer sometimes tells his secrets in such a fashion that you wonder if it were made up, or exaggerated or embellished upon.  Here is the trick though; the writer hides his secrets in metaphors and ad sequitors and similes.  He never says certain things but keeps them to himself. 

                There are some things too horrible to write about, some truths too corrosive to pen to paper.  Stickups, heists and high-speed getaways are the stuff that movies are made of, but movies last 90 minutes, and circumstances happen at about 24 frames per second, some of which are missed by the human eye only catching 18 of those snapshots.  In those 18 frames the onlooker sees a crime occurring, a masked man and crew of bandits, a gun brandished and cash and jewelry taken.  The six frames remaining hide the secret of a family who needs food, of a man who wants to do better, of a young family hoping that there will be some resemblance of Christmas this year.  In those six frames there is a little girl learning to walk for the first time, a man buying a computer with his ill-gotten funds, a hospital bill that is paid for, a cousin who he bribes not to commit a crime – “…here you go cuz, be easy, crime doesn’t pay…”.

                Six frames later my daughter was 3 years old.  She is walking and talking; my wife and I are arguing and cheating.  The universe being the great equalizer it is, decides to punish the actor, who by this time, mind you, has walked a straight and narrow and quite noble path.  The universe rewinds the film, by having him wrongly incarcerated; by having him spend 18 months explaining to judges that “…no, your honor, one man in the back of a limo on his way home from work, working an 18 hour day, did not get out of the car and assault 5 police officers…”  Is it absurdity or the universe at work equalizing, judging and executing its will? 

Six frames later he is raising his daughter alone, the “rent-man” has him in court, the five “assaulted” police officers have him in another court.  He is “holding court” with his college, appealing to the professor, filing a motion by way of assignments, going to trial by finals.  He is juggling a docket of two low wage jobs, and fighting to find a smile for his daughter who he is raising alone. 

                In the 18 frames that a person sees, along with the dramatics aforementioned, are the climactic changes toward resolution, the stuff that movies are made of – rent being miraculously paid, assault cases fought and won – a white do-gooder attorney and a black boy in the law library doing research; two low wage jobs, consolidating into one great paying career.  Within the 18 frames we see a man become a real “Mister Mom”, cutting coupons, learning to braid his daughter’s hair correctly, cooking wholesome meals, not just hotdogs; taking her to the park and to the movies.  The 18 frames a person’s eyes can carry and call resolution search for a special kind of resolution, a completion.  By the 19^th frame, the onlooker is done, completed and whole.  By the 19^th frame, our hero puts his daughter on a plane to Nebraska, not knowing if he will ever see her again.  He wades in the water of the following five frames, lost in a kind of purgatory.

                Movie magic is just that, magic, a secret answer to a baffling question.  Why is this bag so heavy, a duffle bag, the new duffle bag that I carry to work and to Hartford to shut down a site that may mean good-doing folks losing their jobs?  I have answers, reasons, foresight, and only two hands to concoct any solution to the issues at hand.  On the way to Hartford I carry with me, work for the major contract, and work for a minor contract and phone chargers for cars and phone chargers for walls and a laptop charger for a laptop and a phone that can give my laptop internet access in case I have something that I have to google. 

                On the phone I carry a voice mail message from Raven, the third child born to me, the sweetest child anyone would have the pleasure of meeting.  A child who was born from her mother looking like a prune, like every ounce of moisture was torn from her frail little frame.  A child who I held on her birthday, her literal day of birth and said “You are going to be the one to change my life…”.  A child who was allergic to every food you could think of, who’s gentle demeanor was at angst with her horrific skin condition, a special kind of eczema that made her whole body burn always, all the time, never receding into the calm cool us, that we take for granted.  There is a saying “You’re not comfortable in your own skin”; this child knew exactly what that meant in the most literal fashion. 

                Moreover, her eyes were big, dark, and beautiful, and her smile was coy and inviting and her sound was pleasant even when she was in pain and crying and scratching and bleeding and scarring and hurting and she was fearful, feeling as if she were constantly under attack, which she was.  Her nerves attacked her skin, her skin was itchy, her nails attacked her skin, her sores attacked her health, the germs attacked her open sores, her sickness attacked her piece of mind, she was under attack.   A barrage, of unrelenting attack – but she was so sweet, so so sweet and kind and thoughtful and considerate, and docile and satisfied with the smallest pleasure or ease of her plight. 

                If the devil sought to inhabit a body, sought to entrench a soul in misery or pain or suffering, he chose the wrong one when he attacked Raven.  She is the strongest of my four children, strong willed, strong minded, a strong heart that never turns cold or backs down from a fight.  Could you imagine that?  To wake up every morning on fire, your skin on fire, with no hope of reprieve and still be kind and good?  She seemed to carry with her the sins of man, the questions of why, the campaign of not smoking while pregnant, the necessity to drink lots of water, yeah, H2O when carrying.  “Don’t be stressed when carrying”, she seemed to carry it all and delivered it with a smile that the angels themselves would envy. 

                My new duffle bag is a little heavy; I have taken some of the stuff out now, piled parts into my pockets and others onto my desk at home; the desk in my bedroom.  I have moved stuff out of my old wallet and into my new wallet.  Some of the stuff in there did not make the cut.  My “dearly departed” father’s old driver’s license made the cut, I wonder why.  Was it the sentiment?  Was it so that his raspy ever-critical voice would echo from my back pocket up the lateral of my spine, onto my left shoulder and into my ear?  Was it so that I would have one picture of him that I tote around without looking too soft?  Was it because all of our quality time was spent in one vehicle or another or in the garage of his job where he had several of his cars parked?

                Sometimes when a writer writes, he thinks of things in a way that he’s never thought of them before, asks questions that he wasn’t brave enough to ask out loud.  The paper is a kind of shield and  the pen the colloquial sword.  A writer has an opportunity to do battle with the demons and the ghosts and the Harpee-type questions on the wind.  A writer can purge and cleanse and rummage and explore and stop and start and read and write and control the whole world through the whim of each sentence to follow.  He can sigh and breathe and inhale and exhale and shake his head and maybe, just maybe shed a tear if necessary.  A writer is necessary, a writer is the dirt that flowers bloom from, the stuff that keeps the world from being engulfed by water, the writer is something to put your foot on and to lay on and to lean on and to till and to harvest from.  A writer is the spirit of all things like the thing in my wallet that I carry, a driver’s license. 

                “How is Riana?”, he always used to ask.  Of all of the kids, somehow he took a special liking to her.  As a man who was fond of girl children, it could be clear why she was his favorite.  She was feminine from birth, decidedly female, no question to it.  She seemed to sway her hips when crawling and wrap men around her finger from birth.  A decided female, can you picture that?  Think of all of the greatest women of the world, using feminine wilds, not the sexual type, but the decidedly female type.  That was Riana, from her motions to her notions, to her intellectual stamina.  As gorgeous as you could ever imagine a single female child, she was an intellectual killer!  As early as three months of age, Riana knew how to get what she wanted, would dart out and about, crawling and climbing and cooing.  By the time she was one year old she would form full sentences, show hints toward understanding written words, climb on everything, hold small conversations prying into the minds of adults.  She would observe and “play the game”, she would make enemies out of friends, friends out of enemies, the whole world was her oyster.  Riana was a born star and so to hear my old man ask for her first in his raspy voice “How is Riana?” was absolutely no surprise.

                I got lucky with that one.  If there were ever a daddy’s girl, she would be it.  Then again, maybe that’s just her feminine wilds at work, making a man feel more like a man than maybe he deserves.  Making a man think that he is the singular object of affection; the whole world even, though maybe a ploy.  That one will be the one to give her mother a run for her money, there’s no question to that.  “How is Riana?” he would ask and I would give the same old non-commital, non-explanatory response:  “She’s cool”.  We would go off and banter with one another about women and life and his health failing and his plans to secure his safety and his plans for me after his death.  And I would push my agenda, detailing all of my great accomplishments, not as an ego driven sentiment but as a gift to my father, the only gift that a young man can actually offer.  And though I received some accolades and pleasant gestures in regard to how “proud” he was of me, I could never stop carrying the thought that this man was always a major player.

                Now when I say major player, I’m not talking about the MTV video type, with glitz and glamour, I’m talking about the type of man who had women, I mean really had women.  The type of man that was monstoruous but only 5 foot 7 inches in height.  The type of man to ride motorbikes and have five cars at a time and women in every state and a wife in one house and three women in a little apartment down in Williamsburg.  A real player.  Every cent that passed through his hands was counted twice, and he always ended up on top.  But don’t mistake my words for adoration or admiration.  He was a real player.  He had a perfect wife, smart and sexy and kind and good, and independent and financially she “held her own”, but that wasn’t enough for him.  He had to rummage through the scraps of woman kind, and cycle new ones in and old ones out, keeping them in his own little stable in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  Maybe once in a while a good one out of his tryst of three would be good and worthy, but for the most part, he seemed to find the lowest that the world had to offer to fulfill his masculine dream.  His dress wasn’t that of a player, but that of a hard working stiff.  His clothes all seemed to be work clothes, but not suits, real blue collar work clothes – stained and smelly.  He was always on the go, and so the only time we really spent together was in one of his cars.  He carried with him the masculinity of the Deans but upon further inspection the self-esteem of a tattered victim.  I never quite figured out what he was the victim of.  He was smart and carried with him years of medical school, he was strong and carried with him professional bodybuilding trophies, and he was industrious and carried with him several semi-successful entrepreneurial ventures.  He carried with him years of secular schooling as he was on his way to becoming a priest – the man didn’t lose his virginity until he was in his 20’s.  But he seemed to carry something else with him, a sort of discontent, a living purgatory, six frames of unanswered questions.  He was a thing of pity, all of the women in the world could not right it.  The cars and cash could not transport him far away enough from it.  His physique could never be strong enough to lift it.  He was in purgatory, a living purgatory where up and down and left and right were all the same.  He had it worse than Raven, his soul was on fire, and you can’t scratch that.  Maybe his problem is that he never found a single thing to carry.

                And so my duffle bag is not so full anymore, because I have put some things where they belong and I don’t have to carry so much anymore.  Some things are right, just not right now.  Others have meaning but not necessarily to me, and so to carry them in my new duffle bag would only make it ratty and tattered.  I think I’ll enjoy the things I carry, whether it be two pounds and nine ounces or 20, whether it be from state to state or borough to borough, in my new duffle bag which I have to replace, because it’s all used up or in my wallet in my back left pocket, these things are mine, mine to carry.