Eastward-ish - Intermezzo: Call Me Noman (Erasure of Old Self)

Bismillah* your old self
to find your real name. - Rumi


I felt like a dying clown
But with a streak of Rin Tin Tin - The Who


My name is Ozymandias, king of kings!
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! - Percy Bysshe Shelley


It's not completely unheard of to lose your ass at a casino. I mean, it happens all the time. In any movie or television show set in Vegas, if there's a scene in a casino, you've seen someone acting like they've lost their ass. For every story you hear of someone winning at a casino -- it does happen because too much losing is bad for business -- there are countless people who lost their ass ... or more... because the house always wins.

What is, perhaps, a bit more unusual is to completely lose your identity.

Lost. Stolen. Some cosmic message in the form of a pickpocket. Whatever.

The day began on a simple premise. My friend Jamie is, apparently, something of a card sharpie at the blackjack tables and can turn a little bit of money into a slightly larger amount of money in a matter of hours. She wanted to go, partially to have something to do, but also so she could win some money to add to my travel fund.  A dear heart, really. She even offered to stake me some money so I could play myself.

Now, all lines being arbitrary... because, let's be honest, they mostly are... I told her I didn't like the idea of gambling with someone else's money. This, she thought, was completely ridiculous. It was no big deal, she maintained. If I lost my stake, she would be able to make it back. And if I happened to win, I count it as a contribution to the travel fund. And since all lines are, really, for the most part, arbitrary...

I thought, what the hell.

Now, I should also mention that while I am no expert at the game of Blackjack. I have some experience at it.  Actually, other than the horses, the game of 21 is my preferred method of itching the gambling urge. And while the money is nice, it's the adrenaline rush that tends to drive me in these situations. I like blackjack because not only is it an easy game to learn, but it also satisfies a certain egalitarian impulse: you always play against the house, not against your fellow players.

In theory. Apparently there's all sorts of things you can do to put the squeeze on your fellow players and press your own advantage. I will admit a certain ignorance regarding this sort of table etiquette. There are a a few often thought of "hard and fast" rules in how you play the came, like Hit on 16 and Stay on 17. But what they don't tell you is that those rules are as much to the houses's advantage as the odds on a Roulette Wheel. Yes, there are times when it's goo to hit on 16. There are also times when it's good to stay on 14. Because in spite of the seeming simplicity of the rules, the cars are still fickle, they're still shuffled, and they still behave in a random way.

I was doing okay for a while, and managed to a but more than double the stake Jamie had given me. Jamie was doing pretty well herself, for the most part, but she kept giving me advice... which was distracting her from her game. The table was pretty calm, a nice flow was going and the winning was spreading itself around... which is what, in the best of all situations, you can hope for. Then a high rolling Ethiopian, who played loud and nervous and talked smack to distract the order of the game, came and sat in the chair to my right, putting him on the dealer's left and in the first position for cards. I managed to win a few more deals, even getting a Blackjack (a face card and an ace) or two. The more I won, the more smack he talked. He was betting heavy, and had clearly had a number in mind he needed to hit in order to confirm his manhood.

I was up, and the Ethiopian started winning as well. Then he finally hit his number and left. A few more hands were dealt, Jamie was up, so was the other player at the table, and things were going pretty well.

And came The Cooler.

We cycled through two different dealers, both of whom did a good job of spreading the wealth around whenever possible. The third dealer, however -- a cold skinny bitch with fake eyelashes and a pre-teen's love of blue eye shadow -- killed the table almost immediately. And between here and other pre-teen who felt like he'd gained some experience at the $1 buy in tables (There's a 25 cent table fee with each hand. This means that in order to win $1, you have to pay $1.25. To win at all, you have to bet in $5 increments... which means you might as well find a $5 table. But it's good for the kiddies that don't want to feel like they're losing a lot and who never paid attention in math class.)

I lost my buffer and my stake pretty quickly. It was clear that Jamie wasn't finished, though so I told her I'd get some air and wait. 

I went outside and smoked. I could've smoked inside the casino, but it was nice day outside, and I wanted to sit outside and get away from the sound of the slot machines. One of the reasons casinos can afford to let people win at cards is because their money is in slot machines. And spare me the amazing stories of people who have won masses of cash sitting for hours sipping a mojito, smoking a carton of Virginia Slims, and squinting aggressively at the machine in front of them. The odds are always in the house's favor. Yes, they have to let people win so people will walk through the doors to lose and still feel like they had a reasonable chance. But if playing Blackjack is an egalitarian activity, owning a casino is akin to being a successful drug dealer. They ALWAYS come back.

So I smoked, I engaged in some constructive people watching, and felt pretty good. 

Then I noticed my journal was not in my back pocket where I had thought it was.

My first thought was: "I can't find my journal!"

Then I remembered: both my driver's license -- my only form of picture ID -- and my bus pass were in my journal as well.

Did I drop it? I thought about the last time I'd seen it. That was lunch.Sometimes I take it out and set it the table, along with my cell phone, when I eat. I went back to all the placed I'd been. I went to the casino restaurant were we ate lunch. They told me anything left at the table would have been turned into lost and found. I asked where that was located, and was told that I could talk to any white-shirted security officer and they would help me.

So I found the nearest rent-a-cop and described my journal, it's important contents, and asked if he could check. He did. There was nothing in lost and found matching the description. I back tracked every step I could remember. Nothing anywhere. Then I went to the parts of the casino I didn't even go to, around the slots where the wrinkled old ladies say smoking near tobacco-less cigarettes and sipping Diet Coke. Nothing. I found a second security guard. He checked over the radio. Nada. I went to find Jamie and found her at another table, doing very well. Between hands I asked if she had it... maybe, I thought, it slid out of my pocket when I left the table. She didn't have it, and gave the key to the car just in case it slipped out of my pocket there, which I was sure it hadn't.  It wasn't in the car.

At this point I asked another security guard and after the third check, I was sent to a house phone. Maybe some luck?

No. Zack, who was very apologetic, took down my contact information and said they'd call me if it turned up.

I ended up having to get Jamie to take me back to hers and Dave's place to see if maybe, just maybe I had forgotten it there. I knew I didn't because I don't forget my journal. Any one who knows me knows this about me.

Jamie said she had a good feeling, but I didn't share the sentiment. She felt bad because the casino had been her idea, but she didn't need to. Either I lost it because I wasn't paying attention, or it was stolen by someone who mistook it for a wallet or pocket book.

All they'd find is my nearly indistinguishable scrawls and scribbles, my bus pass, my Illinois Driver's License, and my IWW Red Card... which is behind on stamps because I haven't paid dues since hitting the road. Then it occurred to me that if it HAD been stolen, the most they could hope for was to steal my identity.

Let them try, I thought. My credit rating is so bad at this point they'll lose money trying to make it work. If some undocumented worker tried to steal my name for employment, even that record is spotty. Shit. Let 'em have the collectors and parasites that have my name on some list somewhere. Let 'em have my student loan debt.

I drank a beer, ate two cookies, and began to breathe. Yes, breathe. When people panic, usually the first thing they stop paying attention to is the one thing that, without it, they will not be alive. Air. There's a reason that every form of meditation there is begins with a breathing exercise of some kind. Breathing is fundamental. You can have water and food, but without air, it's meaningless. It's something I've fallen back on when I've been on the road and have to change my travel plans at the last minute. Like leaving St. Louis and going to Nashville. Like going to Colorado instead of Salt Lake City. Breathe. Adapt.

Losing my license and bus pass -- which only had a week left on it -- is not fundamentally different from any other change in plans. People place more importance on having photo ID because society is constantly insisting that we prove who we are, that we defend our right to belong, that we identify as one of the group and take our place among them, happy in our very specific anonymity.

I was annoyed at the loss of the journal, my notes since San Francisco, the various bits of poems I hadn't gotten a chance to type out. But I've been writing long enough to know there will always be more words, and the poems... well, they sometimes return of their own volition. As if they will themselves into being.

The universe has a funny way of sometimes giving you what you need when you don't know you need it. People sometimes enter and leave your life at just the right time. Relationships end so that new ones can begin. Although I love my family dearly, I have, over the years wondered what it might be like to have a different name. I have had different names over the years: Mickey, Mic, Michael, Mick, Quill, Papa. I have sought a way to bring the self within myself closer to the surface... to be who I am rather than what the culture dictates I ought to be.

And now, I am divested of my official identification... and in a way, my identity. I can call on a dozen people or more who could attest to my existence, and know me and who I am. There are people who love me, people who see me... truly see me. So, other than the inconvenience of occasionally being carded in a bar... usually by someone who looks 12 ... do I really need more proof of my own existence other than myself?

A name is a marker, nothing more. It separates us from others. Some believe our naming impacts who we become. But really, all a name does is tell others who are.... and who we are not. We attribute more to some names than others. Historical names. Rich names. Famous names. Infamous names. In the end, though, a name is nothing more than an utterance we have been trained since birth to respond to. Sons (many times) carry the last name of their father. Daughters (many times) carry that name unless they decide to get married and exchange it for another person's name. A name has been connected to notions of dependence and independence, to slave ownership, to heritage, to tradition, to the passing on of wealth and affluence, or -- at times -- the passing on of guilt, spite, hatred, and judgement.

What's the line by Shakespeare? A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet?

Granted, in context, Mercutio is trying to convince Romeo to girl he's infatuated with and move on to some other more willing conquest. And then, of course, Romeo meets Juliet and turns into a dumbass.

Sorry. It's not a romantic play. It's farce. It's about how stupid young people can be, and how pointless family feuds are. It's not romantic to kill yourself because you didn't check to see if your girl is still breathing.

My point, though? I am no less who I am just because I can't prove it. In fact, it's possible that  I am more me now than at any time in my life. Ever.

____

*Bismillah: "In the name of god," spoken prior to a sacrificial slaughtering of an animal in the Sufi / Middle Eastern tradition.

Wayward Sacredness: The Plenteous Nature of Obligation (A Pocket Journal Transcription/Explication)

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you get what you need. - The Rolling Stone


Sunday, 18th March, 2012

On some level, life ends up being about who you owe.

Sense of obligation leads around, determines where we go, how we live ... or how we don't ... what kind of jobs we take or don't take. No matter how independent we are, so much of our lives come back to our relationships with others, our obligations to one another.

Started out the day yesterday  at the bowling alley. Drank a few Guinness and had 2 shots of bourbon. I've been staying away from the costlier stuff as a general rule... even bourbon. Which, being back in Mount Carroll, isn't easy.

I've been drinking of course. Dave has been kind in regards to covering quite a bit of my bar tab and Billy's always good for a few in reciprocation. I've paid for some, too; but what I've paid doesn't nearly cover what I've been drinking.

Wanted to splurge a little, though, it being St. Patrick's Day and all. But I was going to take it easy, too.... or, at the very least, PACE myself. (In this, I was largely successful, believe it or not. Penny pinching and making sure I'll be be able to travel are far more effective motivators than worries about my health and welfare.

[I know I'm not a martyr; I never died for anyone but me. - Over the Rhine]

Hung around the bar even after Dave and Julie disappeared into the basement with Billy, Jeanine (Billy's wife), and J.R.

[The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all undimmed. -Fortune Cookie]

After a bit Doug and Laurel come in for the corned beef and cabbage*. (NOTE: Doug is on city council and a die hard historical preservationist. His wife Laurel's business has something to do with some facet of community and economic  development -- not here as much as other places. She and her partner Ernst are essentially hired guns. They dig up and apply for grants, put together project proposals, look at the viability of business projects based on the area the business is thinking of building in. And that's only the stuff I've overheard them talking about At Brick Street Coffee.)  So I moved from the bar to the back table where they sat down, chit-chatted with them while they ate. Doug ordered the salad bar and made a respectable looking salad loaded down with ham and bacon. Laurel ordered the corned beef and cabbage, though she pretty much only ate the cabbage, potatoes and carrots.

We talked a little about my leaving out (again), and Doug tried once again to talk me into staying. Laurel seems much more at ease with people coming and going than Doug... which I find interesting since he prides himself on being  progressive and forward thinking. You'd think he would be more transition-minded of the two.

But then again, he is a die hard preservationist... which is sort of ironic on the surface.

"You're a local fixture," he told me. This was maybe the 2nd or 3rd time he talked to me about staying on since I came back from my Eastbound jaunt. The times before he tried to appeal to my sense of community and obligation -- which are legitimate tactics to use, since I do feel like I'm a part of the community here... which  in part means I have incurred a certain sense of obligation to the place.

[I carry my home on my back. But the cops only frown every time I put it down. - Utah Phillips]

It's difficult to explain the exegesis of why I have to go to people who aren't similarly afflicted. Doug and Laurel did their share of bumping around early in their marriage, but they have been settled here in Mount Carroll, undertaking the renovation and preservation of their historic house on Main Street for 15 years. They understand what Melissa sometimes calls "being a gypsy." But this itch is an entirely different thing. And generally, the only people I have found who really understand it are those who feel it, too.

[I don't know if I'll ever find the way back home. -Utah Phillips]

And it's not just the fact that Melissa is here. It would be relatively easy to avoid her, if that was what I really wanted... even in a town as small as this one. It's still an emotional mind fuck when I see her and talk to her, and I have put off going over the house to finish packing just because my natural impulse is to avoid the emotional pain of visiting A Place That Used To Be Home.  But I knew I'd have to deal with that before I came back here. And really, it's a problem that's all about me -- which leads back, of course, to onfree of the factors that contributed to the end of the marriage.  That I make most things about me and only me... whether they really are or not. 

I have not always been mindful of my obligations. And though I do try, sometimes that underlying selfishness bubbles up to the surface. It's something I work on, something I am trying to be ever present and thoughtful of these days. And it is primarily because I've been traveling and writing and being reminded of just how lucky I am to have a multitude of friends and of how good-hearted people can be if they're given the chance that I can come back here and be aware -- sometimes awkwardly -- that I carry the weight of certain obligations. 

One of those being that I have to be honest about my part of the blame in the breakdown of my marriage to Melissa. This was brought back, clear as the sky is today, when I woke up with a hang over and the residue of a feeling that I had felt a lot over the last year and a half or so. That feeling of being an asshole. Primarily because, while I was certainly drunk enough prevail upon the men's toilet at the bowling alley to vomit in, I wasn't drunk enough to pass out. The drink rarely makes me sleepy. Actually, it usually does the exact opposite. I was sitting up, by myself, trying to get myself to sleep. And then I started to think about things. About being here. About needing to get away. About how what we want and what we need isn't always the same thing. Oh, I'm a fucking genius when I drink. And what do you think this genius did at 1 in the morning?

You know it. I texted Melissa to see if she was awake, knowing there was a better than average chance that she would be.

Me: 

You awake?

Her:

 yes

Her: 

whats up

Me: 

Nothin. Me.

Her: 

What did u want? U asked if I was up?

Me: 

Sorry. I'm just awake. Ignore me.

Her: 

Stop treating me like i chose this.

Me: 

That's fair. But stop treating me like I wanted it.

Her: 

You did.

Her: 

Are u drunk?

Me:

 Been drinking, yes. Don't wanna fight.

Me:

I didn't choose either.

Her: 

I dont either. Why did u text me?

Me: 

Sorry. I have moments. It'll pass, I guess.

If nothing else, my temporary return has been effective at reminding us both what it is about me that pushed her away. Clarity isn't always kind. 

The conversation goes on a bit after this, but the gist of it was: Don't be an asshole. And I can't say I blame her... because... well ... I am. Often. I am and have always been my worst enemy. Sure I have good qualities... I'm well-read, a snappy dresser, a decent writer, a polite guest. My mom likes me. My friends like me. Women occasionally enjoy my company for brief amounts of time.

But I was, in all honesty, a shitty husband in many respects. That I really did try is only a testament to the fact that I was horrible. Not violent. Not mean spirited. But an asshole, nonetheless. Because I wasn't as mindful about my obligations as I should have been.

Of course, that my obligations to my marriage often ran contradictory to my obligations to myself were the real problem.

And when I was talking to Doug and Laurel, trying to explain why it is I have to go... because I'm really only truly happy when I'm Out There, and being Out There is the only place where I can live and not turn into a total asshole because the work I need to do is Out There. And there's a lot of it to do.

There's a lot of it to do because of the obligations I feel. Because my friends have been more than generous, and so has the universe. Because I left the bowling alley without paying ... intending to come back later and pay at the end of the day... and when I did return I found that Doug and Laurel had paid my morning bar tab.  Because Dave and Julie have put up with me for almost 3 weeks. Because John Briscoe sometimes buys me a bowl of soup. Because a homeless guy in Norfolk gave me a dollar and a cigarette. Because I don't want anyone to regret the love and goodwill they show me, and because I want to find someway to share that back with the universe. 

[This post is dedicated to everyone who's been gracious enough to let me sleep on their couches, share their food, and listen to my stories. There's too many of you to list all at once. I hope you know who you are.

And thanks to all the people who read and who, I hope, will keep reading once I get back Out There. Which will be soon. Very soon.]