Where I have been is not where I am from Part I

Where I have been is not where I am from Part I

By R.M.Oliver

I suppose I am up so late because I decided to drink this evening.  I’ve had a bad sinus infection for the last two weeks, have missed too much work-although in this epoch I could do everything required of me at my day job from home-and have plunged into a thick fog of depression.  The strong cough syrup the doctor provided-can you say hydrocodone-along with the familiar fog leads to the easy solution.  But recovery is only an ancillary part of this piece.  This is about where I have been and where I am from, and they will never be the same.

In April I’ll have been back in Dallas for a year.  That’s too long.  No, not just for Dallas, for anywhere.  My natural disposition is wanderlust and right around three quarters of a year of living somewhere and I’m ready to pack what I can carry, toss what I can’t, and hit the road.  Where too next?

Here’s a quick rundown of the places I have lived since I graduated from high school in 1995.  I lived in DeSoto Texas at the time, a suburb on the south side of Dallas.  I start the clock from the day Dad tossed me out of the house.

Glenhaven-Plainview Arkansas 7mo	1995
Ft. Leonard Wood Missouri 2mo	1996
Ft. Sam Houston Texas 3mo	1996
Ft. Leonard Wood Missouri  7mo	1996-1997
Dallas Texas 3 years (36 months)	1997-1999 (From Jan 97 to December 99) The first bit and the middle bit and the last bit were living with the folks again.
America’s Keswick-Whitting New Jersey- 7mo	1999-2000 (New Year’s Eve 1999 to late July or Early Aug. 2000)
Glenhaven-Plainview Arkansas  3years  5 months (41 months)	2000-2003 (July/Aug 2000 to December 2003)
Russellville Arkansas  5mo	2003 (week after New Year’s to May)
Mexico-(yes that’s Old Mexico the cities of Puebla and Cholula) 2 years (24 months)	2004 to 2006 (from late May 04 to early May 06) This was back again with Mom and Dad.  Interestingly enough it is expected for single adult children to live at home in Mexico.
Dallas Texas- 2 years 7 months (31 months)	2006 to 2008 (from early May 04 to late December 2008)
Glenhaven-Plainview Arkansas 1 year 8 months (20 months)	2008 to 2010 (from late Dec 08 to August 2010)
The Christian Home-El Paso-Texas-9 months	2010 to 2011 (from mid Aug 2010 to Mid April 2011)
Dallas Texas-to date 9 months	2011 to 2012 (I arrived here on April 14th 2011 and am putting this together on Jan 4th 2012)

TOTALS

201 months since leaving my parent’s home as a high school graduate.  This is exactly 16 years and 9 months.

5 years, seven months and a week or two total at Glenhaven Youth Ranch

6 years, four months in Dallas

2 years in Mexico

3 years, four months in limbo or perhaps a better way to express it would be in transit, the time in the Military was a mistake-for me it was a mistake for many young men it is precisely what they need.

That formula comes out to 207 months which is exactly 17 years and 3 months.

That’s a six month difference which I’m sure would be accounted for via inexact figuring of the months I left or the months I arrived in various locations.

With some help from my parents I’ll do some figures for the rest of my life.

I’m pretty sure Dallas beats them all out for the most time as a resident which is kind of depressing because I am somewhat ambivalent about this area.  Some days it is a cool city full of cool city beats and a hip city vibe.  Some days it is exactly those beats and that vibe that crushes me and makes me long for endless miles of dirt road, a couple of joints, and either a six pack of High Life or a fifth of Evan Williams.  Add to that a shot gun, a snub nosed .38, and a .22 magnum and say goodbye to pests who feed on garbage and leave what they can’t eat strewn across lawns.

But one thing is clear to me.  I love to travel.  If I could get a gig traveling.  That’s the real dream, that’s the real goal.  Oh sure I’d have a base of operations, most likely somewhere within a quick strike of those dirt roads-the absence of the joints and booze notwithstanding.

And what would I do with that time?  Well just soak it all up of course.  Just check out the tucked away places, the dark corners, and the bright avenues, and all the teeming mass of people.  Just check it all out.

So where to next…

I think I’ll start again in Arkansas.

From there maybe I’ll strike out across country.  Visit LA and San Francisco, maybe stopover in Arizona and see how my buddy there is doing.  Hopefully he’s got his ranch back.  I’d probably go visit the aunts and uncles and cousins on the west coast whom I have not seen in dog’s year.  Then I’d do the same for the Midwestern relations on my mom’s side.  I’d most assuredly go visit my Dad’s oldest sister Nancy in Pennsylvania.  That’s some one hell of a big dose of culture shock for them I am sure.  My aunt Nancy and Uncle Gordon lived most of their married life in Castro Valley-just east from San Francisco across the bay and south of Oakland.  I think it’s been something like 5 years since they left the big western city and followed their oldest daughters family to rural Pennsylvania.  I’m not sure what town they live in but it is near Hershey.  My Uncle Gordon grew up in Watts where being a six foot white boy made him a minority.

And amidst those hello’s, and I’m doing wells, and how you’s to my parents brothers and sisters I suppose I might as well go ahead and track down the others as well.  What others?  You know the others I’m talking about.  The one’s you didn’t meet or only meet briefly at family reunions.  I suppose that’s not quite right.  I gather there are people my age who have spent their whole life in the one place their parents spent their whole life, and their parent’s parents spent their whole life, and their parents’ parents spent their whole life, and their parent’s parents’ parents homesteaded the place and a dime gets you a dollar folks like that are fairly closely connected to that larger family.  Hell they probably live a mile away from their grandmother’s brother from his great grandfather’s second marriage to that widow woman from Upstate New York.

But where to next?  Well I suppose in between all these howdoyoudo’s and so your’re Roger and Marcy’s son, I’d like to visit some bigger cities.  I mentioned Los Angeles and San Francisco, I’d probably check out Portland again, and Seattle, and Chicago.  I’ve been to all those places but would like to see them as an adult.  I hear San Diego is pretty.   I’d at least drive through Las Vegas.  New York City is a have to stop, as is D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Birmingham, Mobile, New Orleans, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  I’d like to check out Columbus, any of them I can find.  I’d also stop off at some of my childhood places, most especially Fayetteville North Carolina.  Which would inevitably lead me back to Central America.  I’d like to visit Panama and Honduras again.

But where to next?  When I’d done all that and of course written a couple good selling novels or non-fiction essay books about it I’d have that hankering to see where the old people came from.  The old people?  You know who I’m talking about.  I’m not talking about the old people as in those sturdy souls who make it north of 80.  I’m talking about the dead ones.  Most of mine would be from Europe I know, the British Isles, Germany, Sweden.  I hear tell some of those from Sweden stopped off in Russia for a while, back when the United States of America was just a few colonies, before heading to Germany.  My grandmother has a poem written by a Peter Krehbiel regarding  his families exodus from his native land.  It is a sad poem in which Peter says farewell forever to the mountains and valleys of his youth,  but he is forced to go because his government will not allow him to worship Jesus as he knew him.  It is a haunting piece of family literature.  So I guess to honor him I’d like to go check out those mountains and valleys.

But where to next?  Well let’s see so far I’ve covered from sea to shining sea.  I’ve traipsed around Central and South America, and visited the land of my forbearers in Europe.  Perhaps Africa and the Middle East.  If some news source-liberal, conservative, or libertarian no matter-said Bud we want you to tour Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan and do a series of human interest stories I’d only have to ask when my flight left.  I long to see India, China, and Japan.  I’d love to go backpacking in the Siberian wilderness, and do a walkabout in Australia.

But where to next?  I suppose by this point I am old.  I can only hope my soul is so stout as to persist for 80 years which is not likely considering the chemicals I have ingested into my body.  And if I am still alive by then, I have plenty of dream money to fund this dream, I’ll probably be splitting my time up between those dirt roads-as I cannot imagine their magic will have worked itself loose of me-and some throbbing city.  Most likely though more of the time will be spent in the country.  Who knows where humans will be traveling in 2056?  Maybe I’ll take a cruise to the moon?  Maybe Mars?  Not a likely thing were you to want me to wager on it, but not impossible either.

I figure by then, sometime in the summer of 2056, shortly after my 80^th birthday, I’ll be aching for my homeland.  I’ve never seen it but the longing in me to travel this earth is nothing compared to the desire to go there.  The former is akin to one’s desire for home cooked pie or cake and ice cream after a home cooked meal.  The latter is akin to a parched  man’s yearning for just one cool drop of water.  That is where I want to go.  And why on earth would I want to spend the in between time gallivanting across creation?  Well I have heard the master of that realm will want to know what I did with the gifts bestowed upon me.  Well if I have a gift for words and a gift for traveling I might as well use them.

And that’s enough of that…for now…I haven’t been to sleep yet, I have the hiccups because I’ve been freshening up a fat dip of Copenhagen for the last ninety minutes or more and have inadvertently swallowed more than a little bit.  The hiccups are annoying but I know just how to get rid of them.  In the meantime I figure I’ll get at least a part II out of this deal, having been sufficiently cryptic in part I.  Plus I’m curious about how my early life breaks down were I to parse it out on a chart like the one at the top of this piece.  Shouldn’t be too hard this first chart covers just over 17 years and 9 months.  The next one will only have to cover 17 years and 3 months, but I’ll probably just round it up to 18 years though, make it easy.

All this talk of years and months makes me yearn even more for my home country.  I can’t imagine we’ll even mark time there.

Love you all…Bud

SOBRIETY

Sobriety is becoming more important to me by the minute. Not so much in terms of the physical either but in terms of a quality of life that I yearn to live. I believe this is chained up with maturity, which takes time, which requires patience. The chemicals I have chosen to ingest have most obviously stunted this process, this shames me. For in my impatience to possess the good life I have failed to properly define what that is. I realize now, at 35 years old, that it is not had in feeling good. For in pursing those temporal pleasures alone we murder our ability to do good, to live good. Can a man make himself evil without realizing it? Can he truly stuff different parts of himself into different boxes without seeping out of the sides and causing a mess? What gives me great hope today, right now, in this moment, is that it is never too late to change what one is doing. It is a difficult path, but it is not onerous. There are many perils to face, but none so impossible as to be worth giving up. And the rewards, the living of a good life, sober, and able to face the human condition with maturity. Well that’s worth all the effort in the world.