To Mitch!

7/17/16

To Mitch!

The time has come for me to write a letter that you may have known that I would write, eventually: an ode, a refrain. But not a goodbye. No, certainly not a goodbye.

I have struggled for many years to put words to paper and I know that the gravest sin I could have committed is only to have held back what I can give of myself, which is really about giving back. In so many ways you raised me: kept my chin held high, made sure I had a life outside of books. I still have your mask that you made in high school circumscribed in the words “King at Last.” I would like to think that it has been my anchor and helped me to keep my head on straight. I looked up to you as a carpenter and craftsman, as knowledgeable about cars and engines, of animals and the wilderness. I even taught 8^th grade math for two years and tried to keep kids from doing all the crazy things we used to do at that age! I still think about you all the time. Last week I rode my bike back out on Rosedale, through the part with all the hills that go out to Highway 100 and imagined that I was chasing you the whole time. I couldn’t keep up. I went through Indian Hill Nature Center and could hear Schlicht yelling at us about being good on our field trip, keeping our bug logs, and could see Jerry tackling trees and everyone laughing about it. The bridges are still there and the stream still runs beneath them.

I had always pictured you as Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn, dodging mishaps, always sneaking by somehow without a scratch. I guess that’s why I’m angry about things. I wanted you to be here when I finished school in Colorado and I wanted you to be here when I went off to be a teacher so I could tell you all the things my kids said, about all the bike rides I went on. All the skateboarding I’ve been doing. I think that’s what I’ve missed the most is just the thought of how much fun it would’ve been to get into skateboarding together. Snowboarding was awesome and I’ll never forget jumping around on tables in our basements, strapped to a snowboard, balancing on odd pieces of furniture. I’ve heard this tribute in my mind for a  while and this year was the first time I noticed that I couldn’t just let my mind run when I ramble and trust that I would make good things in speech. I don’t know if that’s a fact about me getting old or having my mind on too many things, but right now that’s a fact.

You were the proof for so many of us that you could be young, bright, smart, well-liked – God, everyone in town knew and liked you – adventurous, funny. You were proof that we could have it all, and then some. You were our world.

I can’t tell you about all the things that I’ve learned or all the people I’ve met in the past few years, but I still want to try, to put my mind at ease knowing that I haven’t left you behind. In everything I do, I always know you are with me because I am not going through this alone and you were and are my best friend. I was afraid to come back to Cedar Rapids the year after you left, but now I think it’s time for me to be here and to be happy, and feel young and wild and free like you would want. I know, you’re saying “c’mon Veg, get on with it,” “okay, Reg, we get it. I’m here and I’m never leaving.” I know that’s what you’re saying because I can hear it just as much as I can hear the cicadas outside. Summers in Iowa man, gotta love ‘em. At least I’m not doing corn detassling this summer! Oh man. I was going to go out again for it, but just can’t submit myself to that any longer. Part of me is afraid to be alone with my mind for that long, and that is a new thing. I have never felt that before.  

I have met people that will totally destroy you and tear your entire life apart if you let them, and it’s not because they are bad people. It’s because the same thing happened to them and they do not know how to communicate this to others effectively. I have met the sweetest and brightest children, the wisest parents and grandparents, people who live well with everything handed to them, and others who work really hard for everything they have.

I don’t know why I’m doing this if for no other reason than to be able to trust my own voice again; to have a clearer mind. I want to be able to hear you when you call back to me, and to know that it’s really you there, just as I am sitting in this room. We have friends that are rockstars, friends that are musicians. We have friends in politics and in sports. Friends in law school and in business, friends that are married with children. Friends in music and in medicine. Friends that teach and dream. Friends that love and adore you. Friends that miss you.

It wouldn’t feel right for me to move on in life without writing you, so know this: I’m not writing to say goodbye. I’m writing to say write me back. That I can hear you when you laugh at my bad jokes and that I still chase you in the wind. That I didn’t catch you. That I couldn’t keep up. 

Postscript

1) I am most cogniscent here of circumscription as delineating or marking boundaries, and the closest thing we get to in geometry to overlap: "to construct or be constructed around (a geometrical figure) so as to touch as many points as possible." Circumscription thus gives a sign for how embedded "we are" "in each other." We see this in your work on Mask 1, in bridges over streams, and in friendship. 

2) To "mean," we have to love. It would sound rhetorical to say "you give me meaning," but we certainly don't get it in isolation! Logic and meaning are thus maddening and enriching, embodied and dissolving, solidifying and granulating, and none of these things, and something completely alter to these things. Friendship thus gives us an orientation in time, a project to organize our lives around, sources of authority, and a grounding for our reasons. You have been all of these things and more simply by being a source of love.