He is Fantastic, Horrible, Magnetic and Repulsive
So goes the life of Harry Hogg
It has been a whirlwind of a life, lived in the moment, with neither past nor future. In so many respects, my life has been lived on the pages of a travel book.
Today, living my best, quiet days, my life is set in concrete only to the extent that much of my writings, ideas, lies, and fantasies have been sparked to life from personal experience. That last sentence is subjective because no two travelers will interpret a person, landscape, or lie similarly.
It feels like an all-too-brief romp through a world. I have tried to learn something from the issues I’ve faced. Yet, there’s a truth in recognizing that I keep on the page an airbrushed version of my past.
I cannot speculate what my cluttered mind will save, not all the sleepy Sundays, but surely the nosebleed after love. Sometimes, I feel I’ve always been passing through, on my way, backward or forward; it did not matter, only the moving.
As a man grew older and wiser, I still find it hard to believe that my biological mother abandoned me. Still, I must have inherited the loner and wandering spirit from somewhere. As a teenager, I wanted to know why everybody had the answers or if they would make them up for me. I guess I never asked the right questions.
I don’t know why the answer was significant. It wasn’t that it would change anything. Whenever I needed my mother, she was there. I never went hungry, my socks were darned, my trouser knees were mended, and I was always clean. Dad was too strong a man to be intimidated by anyone. I never felt anything but safe.
I don’t know when I became a man who enjoyed writing about his life, but honestly, it didn’t hurt. If I was ever trying to say anything, it was about escaping the gravity in my life, freeing myself from life’s inescapable center.
Dad always said, we come into the world alone, and go away the same, try to spend the interlude in closeness.
There is nothing quite like kindness, which is why we all recognize it when we see it. I am not malcontent, not close, but I have always felt a tied string needs untying. It’s the same as saying a boy is always in search of a man.
If my life were a book, its title would be A Quiet Journey of the Heart.
It would be a misleading title, of course. There have been quiet moments of reflection, times when I was caught up in the quiet, lost in lonesome cities, but there has also been fury, living in the hell of meaningless words.
I watched the breeze blow her hair that day
The polka dot dress and its endless sway
My love came over her shoulder
From a thousand summers away
Leonard was always hanging out somewhere in my head, coaching me and telling me what to do. If he wasn’t, I wanted to be as good as possible so that wherever he was, if he had any way of knowing, he could be sure I was trying hard for both of us.
I remember filling up days and nights, rushing headlong, and spending every day, hour, and minute with hugs.
You have a way with words, I was told over and over while writing lyrics. I’m still trying to understand what that meant way back then and how writing today can make me feel guilty for saying the simplest thing. I’m not lonely and not afraid of what is happening… afraid only of the weight of a letter:
I miss you so much. In the last year, we’ve only been together for two months. I know how difficult it is, and we need the money, but I wonder if there isn’t anything else you can do during the next couple of years to make it easier for me. It will be necessary for the children to have you at home more. I know this is not the kind of letter you would like on your birthday, but somehow, I feel desperate and need you to understand. I love you so much. I want you to come home.
It was a letter never sent, never received. It was found among others after no one accepted my apology. For a long time, I felt like I was on an island, separated and adrift, with no bridge back to the mainland. They gave me money, put it right here in my hand. I could have used a razor every time it came on the radio, but no one could explain why nothing was pretty left to see.
Standing at the ocean’s edge
After schoolyard dreams
And yesterdays
I bow my head
To say a prayer
For all the ocean’s runaways
After my parents died, I wasn’t so wounded by anything ever again. I did not resume the search for my beginning. Maybe I no longer cared about finding out how I began this journey. I certainly couldn’t be bothered to keep that in the forefront of my thinking.
The day after, I got out of bed, and it squeaked. The floor was cold. I went through to my son’s bedroom. Happy birthday, I whispered. He slept on, arms splayed, though the room was freezing.
Later in the day, sitting inside his new car, he said: Promise to be with me every birthday, Dad. A promise kept, though the next vehicle he buys himself.
For most of my life, I’ve been late, always undone, and when I look back, that is the way I always was. By eight in the evening, I had fallen in love again. My socks are not darned but renewed; my jeans, those I can still get into, are not repaired but renewed, and our house is kept clean.
It is a safe life without danger. I am touched in my heart by people I have never met and am never likely to meet, yet I can pull out a sheet of paper from my desk drawer and write a note to each one. It’s like we have pulled off some fantastic tricks together.
There’s no one going to risk very much with me. But still, I have this plan, that’s all. Maybe start all over. Be someone entirely new to the online world.
But yet, I cannot prevent what is happening from happening. I know I’m on a fine thread. I know what I’m saying doesn’t make much sense, but it will.
Maybe when I’m gone.
The writer wrote the part
His character wore the heart
He tried to fall in a graceful way
But in the end, he wanted to stay
Don’t take him now, the writer wrote
He wants to sail on his brand-new boat
The truth to tell on his smiling face
So eagerly, he waits to take his place
Write not that the sailor failed in life
He married again a loving wife
He could be a tempest, for that is true
But of his love, he wrote for you
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