The Frog Chronicles

For Sale

When you’re broke - as I often am - you look to sell things. That big-screen TV in the back room. Those expensive fly rods you hardly use anymore. That old Fender Telecaster you can only halfway play. Whatever it is that you have to spare that someone else might want. Whatever you can give up without too much regret.

It’s not fun, but it works. Or, I should say, it works for a while. You never get nearly what the objects are really worth, but you typically get enough.

Enough to pay that unexpected repair bill. Enough to keep the lights on. Enough to take someone special out for her birthday dinner.

But, enough is never really ever enough. You’re still living past your means. You’re still shelling it out faster than you’re bringing it in. And sooner or later, it catches up with you again. Sooner or later, you don’t have anything left to sell.

That’s where I’m at now. I’m down to the core. There’s nothing extra left to trade.

So, I’m selling my stories. My memories. The things I’ve done and seen that nobody else has.

Like the time I had sex with Lilly under a picnic shelter during a thunderstorm. I still have the ball cap she wore to dinner later that evening, after we got soaked hiking back to my truck. Or the poncho I wore that one time at Bonnaroo when I dropped acid with those guys from Tom Petty’s road crew. And the cowboy hat from the week I spent with a certain redhead on Grand Bahama Island. I eventually had to convince her husband, of all people, to transport my sorry ass back to Florida on his yacht.

But the general idea is brilliant, if I don’t say so myself. These little items are worth very little on their own, obviously. But when you consider their history, their provenance, well, it’s a different story. And that story is what matters.

Imagine the worth, if you will, of a single pair of gold hoop earrings - earrings that also carry the memory of 20 minutes spent making love on a porch swing with Kimmy, your then 22 year-old first wife. It was just a few brief hours after she had promised you forever. You begged her to lift up her sundress and straddle your naked thighs, and you nearly went insane when did exactly that. She’s gone now - lost first to an ugly divorce, then finally, for keeps, to ovarian cancer. But those hoops still carry the memories of how it felt. And the finality of her death, coupled with that fragile beauty she carried… well, those earrings have to be worth thousands, all things considered.

And imagine what I’ll get for my kid’s old wooden rocking horse. A person can’t look at that horse without seeing the way his face lit up when you carried it through his mom’s kitchen door on his birthday in 2002.  Imagine what someone ordinary schmuck would pay for that sort of karma.

Surely there must be thousands of wealthy people who have lived out their days working and doing what’s right, instead of chasing butterflies and pretty girls the way I have. Surely they’ll pay good money for all these memories. Imagine what they’ll give to be able to tell their kid’s kids about drinking wine on a mountain top with a woman you had - or, I should say they - had met earlier that day in an art museum, instead of how they spent that same Saturday at a desk. 

And I’ll finally be filthy rich, and I won’t need to remember those things anymore.

Premonition

I dreamt you into existence.

I knew the way your hair would curl around your face, and I knew precisely the sound of your voice. I conjured the way you would use your words, and even the way you would hold a book. I knew the music you would love so ferociously, and all of the stories that would sustain you. 

These are all things I created in my restless sleep. I made entire galaxies for the two of us to inhabit. 

Because I knew.

I knew your name, even as a small child. I knew what it would feel like to wrap my arms around your waist and bury my head in the nape of your neck. I knew the heat of your body, and I knew the warm-soft fullness of your lips.

I dreamt the salt in your tears. I created the agony you’d feel when life would beat you down, and I drew the shape of your smile for when we shared our first kiss. I distilled the pure joy you would feel when you held your newborn daughters.

I did these things. I knew. I loved you, even before I met you.

Here’s the rub…

The rational part of me wants to see her happy. The reptile side of me still wants to be the guy who makes her happy.

Christ, what a mess. I don’t even know if I’m coming or going.

New Years

Life is a short, cruel and dark ride. You will die sooner than you like. The things you spend years acquiring will soon bore you. The universe doesn’t care all that much about whether or not you have the things you need to be comfortable or happy. You can pray to whatever god you like, but your words will go unheard because the gods are only there to sanctify us when we are at our cruelest, not to provide us the things we need to survive or be happy. You can collect gold, build castles, throw up walls or acquire power over millions, but it’s not going to stop you from waking up in a cold sweat at 3AM.

There is one thing, and one thing only, that will bring peace to a human mind: blind, ferocious, bottomless, non-judgmental love. Cling tight to your spouse, your children, your family and your friends. Always give people the benefit of the doubt, at least until they prove unworthy. Assume strangers are merely friends you haven’t met yet. 

This is my goal for the upcoming year. I’m throwing my cynicism overboard, and I’m going to fight tooth and nail for what I want most. I’ve lost too much already, and time draws short.

Life Skills

I can work a shovel pretty well, so that the guy working the backhoe doesn’t slice into any underground electric or gas cables.

I can take you to a place on a mountain where the Perseid Meteors will leave you speechless. I can also kiss you on the back of the neck so softly that you forget the stars falling over your head.

I can drive a tractor and help make hay in early June.

I can tune the SU carburettors on an old Austin-Healy Sprite, and then make it dance around a race track.

I can drive a forklift, and fill a tractor-trailer with enough food to supply most of the K&W Cafeterias in Kannapolis NC.

I can also leave an important order off that truck, and then drive south and hand deliver it in the morning. Even after working all night.

I can convince you to lift your skirt and make love to me on porch swing when we are both 22 and drunk on wine.

I can shoot a shotgun with a bit of skill, and cast an entire flyline at a tailing permit that you can barely see. I can pick morels and prepare them with a trout we just caught with our bare hands.

I can write, and I can tell you stories, at least a little bit. I can convince you to let me take pictures that will make you blush the next day. You’ll still smile when you see them, though.

I can hold your hand on the rough days. I can be a selfish prick sometimes, too.

I can do lots of things. I really can. Given the chance, anyway.

All of It

I want her number back in my phone
I want her voice back in my morning
I want her scent back in my bed
I want to find her crimson hair on my pillow, and the smudge of her lipstick on the collar of my best dress shirt.

I want that twinge of worry when she doesn’t answer and that flash of anger when she calls too late at night.
I want that whiff of lingering perfume when she leaves in the morning

I want to be confused on what cycle to use when I find something soft and delicate and feminine in the dirty laundry.

I want to crawl out of bed early because I need to put gas in her car in the middle of February.

I want to take a lukewarm shower because she used up all the hot water. I want to pace the room while she dries her hair at the mirror, and I want to flip through infomercials for twenty minutes while she finishes getting dressed.

I want all of it. All of that stuff that makes me crazy.

All of the waiting. All of the fussing. All of the everything.

All of the kisses.
All of the snores.
Even all of the arguments.

All of her sex, all of her curves, and all of her smarts.

All of the ways she makes me feel like I’m hitting out of my league.

All of it. I miss all of it. I want it back. 

All of it.

Run

Run away with me. Cash out, grab your passport and we’ll just leave. For anywhere or nowhere or everywhere, it doesn’t matter. Just us, our bags and maybe a camera and your guitar. If the only thing we have is each other, then surely we won’t drift apart ever.

I want you to need me. To be terrified of being without me, even for a minute. I want you to cling to me. I want to possess you. I don’t care how fucked up it sounds. I don’t care what they say. Fuck that noise. I want to own you.

You see, the thing about wanting to write is that I have to sink into a dark place to do it, and part of me does not want to go there.

Ghosts

I fucking hate ghosts.

Not, mind you, the dubious sort of spirit left behind by those who have shuffled off this mortal coil, but rather the memories and vibrations left behind by someone or something special that has been lost. The sort of ghost that is hard to escape because it has attached itself to a place or a habit that was once a haven, but that you now share with someone you miss.

Even this desk holds ghosts for me now. Ghosts that make me want to look back instead of forward. Ghosts that whisper, over and over, of what I got wrong, and of how I failed, and of how I came up short. Ghosts that only want to talk about what might have been.

Fuck, but I hate those ghosts. I hate them, and they are everywhere.

Not Yet