1st TAKE/2nd LOOK: #26

Closure is the OTHER side of the door.

Oh, the hair! The most hair-larious thing about these photos is that ALL of us - girls and boys - have the same feather flip style. Thanks to the brilliant minds that put this whole thing together. It was perfect.

Going back to Farmington New Mexico for my 40th High School Reunion created an opportunity to chronicle a connected series of posts for my readers. The first three installments are linked below so you can catch up. Please comment, like, and share at will. If the mood strikes, please click a link to subscribe. Free is fine. Paid is precise! Compass Star Wordsmith is a reader-supported publication. Thanks

I’m not sure if this Tip Jar is allowed on this platform. If you wear a Tin-Foil Hat and live off of the grid, you get it. You also may not be reading this. But those of you who are reading this - you owe it to your sister-in-law to alert your brother. Thanks.

I made this playlist over the days on the road. I would love for you to listen and enjoy it as much as I have. Blast it.

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Post 9/2

Feel the Sting

Is Vulnerable Invincible?

What’s your deal with the Devil?

Devil-Deals scatter the roadside of pop culture (and probably our lives as well), usually torn up and discarded just as the fine print is deciphered. Too late - we all crave the money shot, right? Meeting your dad for the first time can be a real bitch. Just ask Luke. Or Mr. Lomax.

NOT the Devil, just my Demons

This song about Demons hit me full-on. This passage, in particular, bounced around my brain on the road over the past few days. Then I introduced myself.

Know Your Demons

Know your demons take a look inside
Know your demons ask them why oh why
Know your demons only you can set yourself free

It ain't nothin to cry about
It's just something to figure out
That's the way you return
Return back to life
It ain't gonna feel comfortable
When you're facing the underworld
But it outweighs losing sight
Take my advice

I happened upon this great read about Demons and how we can live with them. Think about the words employed to explain our engagement with our demons:

• Battle

• Fight

• Slay

• Conquer

• Overcome

No wonder they want to fuck us up. We want to destroy them. Sounds like self-preservation to me. I wonder if I knew all this 20+ years ago, would I have the emotional maturity to absorb it? Unlikely.

Click his album cover to listen to the streamer of the week service that is not somehow killing the world or the music industry in your mind. As a biographical aside, I recently discovered Burt. Knowing that he’s on John Prine’s Oh Boy label makes him solid in my book. Please look him and the label up. Well worth it.

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I spent 1476+ miles alone, fighting my demons on the way out there and getting to know them on the way back. The funny thing, it seems to me, is that some of my classmates were finally getting to know their demons too. I guess 40 is the new therapy.

The concept of closure is ubiquitous. Everyone knows what it is. But then ask a follow-up How does one accomplish closure?

The official Merriam-Webster version goes like this:

Closure: an often comforting or satisfying sense of finality 
for victims needing closure 
also: something (such as a satisfying ending) that provides such a sense

That tells me what it is. Not how to do it. It seems we’re left to our own devices. Self-medication. Pop psychology. Adulterous affairs. Binge watching Disney+. The list of self-destruction never ends. We know because we did it.

Coming out the backside of life on top is sort of like taking the back door after you make the eight

Or after that perfect wave, you just slide out the back door

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We don’t need no stinking badges!

As the subtitle of this post implies, CLOSURE is a long-sought-after resolution to a life-altering experience. Sadly, it’s become a bromide carelessly tossed out after mass shootings and grandma dying alike. The word is so often heard it’s almost nothing now. Thoughts, prayers, closures, yadda, yada, yad.

Traveling to Farmington, the source of both innocence and evil in my life, is so symbolic of that word that it just hung over me like a sword. Damn Damocles, Grandpa Smitty would mutter under his breath.

I wrote in my last post about the physiological reaction my body had as I crested the hill in Fruitland and headed into town. Names of towns like Tuba City, Kayenta, and Tech Nos Pos had primed the emotional pumps. Now they flowed.

The weekend rolled on, and as I got the immense privilege and delight to engage in meaningful one-on-one conversations with several of my classmates, the concept of closure seemed to be on a lot of tongues. But it wasn’t spoken of by name.

Rather, it was cloaked in a veil of vulnerability. Classmate after classmate felt at ease enough with me to open up about what Farmington and Farmington High School mean to them. I cannot describe how beautiful those moments were.

And how emotionally connective. These were soul-satisfying moments, ones that are now so meaningful as I look back on them. We are a mixed bag of personalities - our cliques had the fuzziest edges so we all seemed to move in and out of each other’s spheres with ease.

Senior portraits lit the memory candles and adult beverages fueled the flashbacks. To a person, it seems we all had a reason to fear coming to this reunion. A reason not to come. Probably a bunch of reasons. But come we did.

At the Friday night Meet n’ Greet, we easily had over 100 friends gather on the campus of Merrion Oil Company out of a class of about 400. The committee decided to reject the trappings of reunion protocol and go complete FarmingvilleOG -

That should’ve been our class motto. No fancy dinners. No dress codes. No tickets. No bullshit. I’m surprised David Toledo didn’t steal a trashcan and make a batch of Jungle Juice. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the libations that night. A lot of them!

That made Saturday’s Homecoming Football Game in the sun even more sweaty. FHS almost pulled off the win in overtime after tying it up in regulation. It kind of fits into the theme of the weekend, and to be honest, the theme of our class.

Rack up another moral victory. Almost got it done. We’ll get’em next time. A day late and a dollar short. At some point, an easy win would be nice. Or at least it would be a hell of a lot different than what we’re used to. But it’s not written that way. Now I see that.

So the door I speak of is two-sided. Naturally, as all doors are. As I visualize philosophical concepts in my mind, if I cannot place them in a dimensional state, I suffer meaning loss. Naming Closure as one side of the door requires that I label the other side. As what?

Look no further than the title of my last post. Is Vulnerable Invincible? Sometimes, I amaze even myself. He said humbly. The trepidations that I was feeling, and that my friends were confiding in me, are called Vulnerability.

I am very proud of the FHS Class of 1982. We truly have something others do not have. And this Thing that we have is out of stock, not back-ordered, and is no longer manufactured. You can’t buy it no more. We got it all. And now we finally are learning how to use it. Only took 40 years for some of us. That’s Gen-X.

The days I spent on the road was needed and necessary for my growth. The days I spent in Farmington was critical for my well-being. The time I spent with my friends rejuvenated my soul. I’m in contact with several of them and foresee new growth on the friendship tree.

The view from the top of FHS Hutchison Stadium, looking west to Airport Mesa. Truly God’s Country. Thanks to Ariane Herring Borgia for the photo.

The last function of the weekend was a brunch at one of the local casinos. Of course. We are of that age I suppose. The Sunray Casino is located, fittingly enough, at McGee Park at The San Juan County Fairgrounds.

Which just happens to be the site of my first and last bull rides. Apropos indeed. Those two bull rides, the first at 12 (1976) and the last at 16 (1980), are the bookends of my life in Farmington. The entirety of my formative adolescence was spent traversing the triangle of towns in the Four Corners.

The Demons I battled all of my life were conceived of and born in Farmington. Little knowing that those Demons were feeding at the trough of denial I kept filling up. The door to closure was always locked for me.

Your Demons have the keys. Just make peace and ask them for the key,

Ric

Farmington NM pop. 46,422

The history of Farmington is quite remarkable - both ancient and modern. I love the fact that in 1950, a mass UFO sighting occurred, with over half the population reporting that they had witnessed the event.