There is a scientist within me that wants to categorize my father. Make of him a quantity or dichotomy, enumerate him:
1. as Scientist
2. as Photography / Storyteller
3. as British
4. as Authority
5. as Bryan William to us and Robin to his true friends
6. as Provider
7. Dad
I usually get bored with long lists.
~
What is a beginning? It cannot be created, at least not by the potential creator. Like a life is a beginning: it must be given to you. Things are more easily be ended, though. I was not given a beginning, so I begin with the end.
I do not think that I will be able to cope with my father’s death. I have not coped well with the deaths of others.
When my dog died, I watched television for thirteen straight hours.
When my friend Brie died, at first I laughed and watched a plane fly overhead; I haven’t stopped crying since.
When my Nannie died, I broke down in the cafeteria at school (there’s no jury like your peers).
Every day I prepare myself for my father’s death. But I do think there will be a day when I stop crying.
~
A certain peace comes after a rainfall, a rising with the mist.
~
There was a time in my father’s life when a painful degree of hopelessness followed desperation. I can very clearly remember how he used to come home after work, summarily acknowledge the rest of us, and then go right up to bed. I spent very little time with my father at this point in our lives.
His boss at work had decided to make his own personal life a public affair, and consequently created himself tyrannus ab administratione over my father. In this structure, my father could hardly operate. His job required a continual adaptation of technique in order to get the results he desired. Histology was his muse, it was his passion and means of melodic expression against the dissonant chordal structures handed to him by his teachers of decades past. You could sometimes see it in his eyes: a flurry of melody following the thump! smack! of wood on skin. Those damned teachers of the old British school. Nobody escaped that system without a caning. Sure, scars are formed – ugly details which can be seen upon closer observation – but the very act of covering those marks can be characterising and religious in nature. Old people do not lie when they say that such hardships build character.
It was at this point that I discovered and more truly understood my father’s patterns.
~
Comfort can be found in routine, but so too can loneliness. You begin to wonder about other lives; you begin to fantasize about other people. Imagination can be freed, but so can destructive energies.
An iron trap can be seen to cover the face, perhaps even the entire body. This maiden is first a protection against the loneliness of routine, held in place to deflect the sharp blows that are perpetually falling. To one outside the maiden, it is an obvious entrapment: you can watch the slow drain of blood by the inward-pointing spikes. They aren’t as big or obvious as depicted in medieval textbooks. These points are dangerous for their imperceptibility.
It took my father three years to escape from his loneliness.
~
I remember reading in one of my old comic books about an archaeologist who had discovered an ancient mask in a dusty tomb. It was a very beautiful mask, entrancing both for the intricacy of its construction and the elemental simplicity of its decoration. It became of such value to him that he had to hide it from the police in that country so that he could keep it for himself.
When he brought the mask home to his wife, she screamed and would not let it into the house. His love for this mask forced him to leave her and lock himself in his office at the university so he could be alone to study the mask. He spent years alone with the mask, never letting anybody in.
Then one day he left his office, walked out into the hall, and collapsed in a corner. He began to laugh. He laughed so hard that all of the other archaeologists and professors came out into the hall to find out what was happening. They found the archaeologist in the corner, laughing, the mask beside him at his feet. He would not talk; he just stared at them and laughed. They wanted to learn why he did this, so they began to study the mask.
When I was a kid my father never liked me reading comic books. He thought it was a waste of time and money. At the age of thirteen, I sold one of my comic books for nearly six-hundred dollars. Now I can read anything I want.
~
Stories lie. No matter what is said by old people and other authorities, stories are not real. It’s all bullshit. There is no greater storyteller than a thief. Storytellers are themselves thieves. By his retelling of the story, he steals; he takes away truth, opinion. You can’t argue with a storyteller. They will either ask you to keep quiet while they talk or create another lie and tuck you back into bed. Stories are dead artefacts, cultural scars, masks buried in fine sand. Never in my life will I ever believe a story.
~
My father and I would, on occasion, discuss whatever ‘new thing’ had emerged in any of our common interests. Advances in digital media; the problems with conservative government. A re-released and remastered Miles Davis album: my father always insisted that Miles Davis ceased to be Miles Davis after the release of Bitches Brew in 1969. No matter how well I argued in favour of the album – how a great deal of music since then used it as a reference and inspiration – my father would insist that the Golden Age Of Jazz ended with that album’s release. He just would not understand that rhythms as well as notes could be improvised.
~
I was always building things with my father. We worked on lawn chairs, we raised a wooden fort over the three compost piles in the backyard, we would build little electric motors. There exist pictures of us rebuilding the entire side of our house. I’m trying to be like father: holding the hammer like him, wearing boots and safety goggles. I might look a bit like him, but the glasses don’t fit properly. I do still like to build things though.
~
I can remember my favourite times with my father. We would be watching television or listening to music, my face resting on his stomach. There was a certain warmth that I felt then, one that I’ve always tried returning to. I will never forget his smell; there is no smell in the world like that of your father when he hugs you. During my life he has always had a large stomach, but I’ve never been ashamed of my father. I liked the way it felt under me when he breathed. I rose up and down in a constant and pleasing rhythm. Long before any real concrete ideas of masculinity had entered into my life, I was never embarrassed to feel this way. My artificially-protective shell was not yet formed.
I soon learned that real men have no desires or feelings, only the desire to feel.
~
There is nothing easier than an ending. You know what to do with an ending. No contradictions, no argument. Just a period or a fade-to-black. THE END. You laugh or cry, or you leave the theatre.
~
The first thing that I remember about my father is his voice. He always had a very soothing voice, and it remains the same now that he has entered into old age. Even when he yelled it was a pleasant voice. Oddly, yelling is a part of his more loveable patterns. Every day when he comes home from work he announces his entrance with a melodious “hel-lo”, rarely varying the pitch or timing as the weeks pass.
My father can’t dance, but he sure can sing when he wants to.
