Restless

Restless,
Wherever you are,
It's somewhere else you want to be
Nothing now is good enough
Wanting what's out of reach
Restless in your body
Restless in your mind
Restless in your soul
Flitting from one idea to the next
Never deeper than getting started
Find your place, restless body
Quiet your thoughts, restless mind
Discover your direction, restless soul

307

It was the day after he died that I went for the first time by myself to a live concert.  I had never heard of the bands, nor had I ever gone to a club like this.  I wasn't even sure what kind of music it would be, I just went.  The only assurance I had was that it would be loud and crowded, which was perfect for forgetting.

I didn't remember dressing for it, but I still have the t-shirt, crunchy with sweat and spilled beer and a splash of blood, not mine.  I should have felt out of place, being one of the only females, and the only one not in the band who was over forty.  The guy at the door asked if I was looking for somebody.  It was nice he was willing to let me in to find my kids, but I have no kids.  "No.  Just one admission, please."  I must have had some look on my face because he didn't say any more, but his eyes lingered.  The floor was sticky and it smelled like spilled beer and piss even before people started spilling and pissing.  When the first band took the stage, I fought my way into the middle and jumped with the crowd, letting the driving bass and thumping drums and screaming vocals take me.  That first night, the day after he died, I screamed and cried in the crowd, pushing and shoving against the bodies of the young.

225

It would have been a fine evening with anyone other than Greg.  Sharon had never been to an underground nightclub before and she thought the sweaty, sticky atmosphere and thumping music was great.  She leaned in and cupped her hand to Greg's ear, "Would you like to dance?"  Greg rolled his eyes and went back to looking at the other patrons, having far more fun than Sharon.  She kept watching Greg.  He scratched his ear with his left index finger, drawing his hand casually in front of his face, sniffing it on the way by.  She wondered why she was there, or anywhere, with him.

221

The crowd moved like one monstrous being.  It jumped in time to the thumping, driving music and undulated.  Individuals were lost in the group and each person became a cell in the whole.  The band on stage was the heart, pulsing and driving the life, but separate from the body.  Sweat poured from the dancers, the screamers, the leapers, the lovers and they all thrummed to the same beat.

135

The wind makes no noise; the trees and stones give voice to the wind. High in the broad pine, the wind played the branches and needles. The music crescendoed, suddenly rested for a beat and began the slow refrain. The wind played a different song on the old oak that included the percussion of snaps and creaks. The wind on stones plays melody, racing up and down the scale.

120

He never went to the auditions; the lack of a daughter would be too obvious there. He only ever sat in on rehearsals, watching as the girls improved night after night, though some, invariably, never improved.

He sat right with the other proud dads, but unlike them, he never brought a Tom Clancy novel or the latest issue of Fly Fisherman or even a fancy phone. He watched. His favorite was "A Hard Knock Life," though "You're Never Fully Dressed" came in a close second.

Whenever any theatre company was putting on Annie, Harper was there. Unobtrusive in "dad jeans" and a flannel shirt or slightly worn out weekend polo.

95

The outdoor concert smelled like beer, sweat, perfume, and cigarettes. Occasionally someone steeped in weed wandered by, but the security cracked down on that hard, so it wasn't much of a problem for Julia who was surrounded by bodies. Slowly but surely she was moving closer to the stage.

It was a small city, but they had managed to get some formerly big names to do their Friday night concerts. Everyone came out, though for different reasons. Most came out no matter who was performing. Julia knew anyone under the age of thirty attending this concert was here to find their friends and to be seen. A great many came just to drink and ogle the teen girls. Around the outskirts were the very old and the infirm, bobbing their heads and being grateful they weren't indoors on such a nice night.

Julia, and most of the people down in front, were actually here to see the band. A fifty-something lady dressed head to toe in jeans was screaming the words and swaying, hands in the air, her eyes locked on the lead singer. Whenever he appeared to look her way, the lady would wave two thumbs up, hoping she had been seen. Julia stepped around the woman into the red light bathing the first fifteen feet of the crowd.

Even after more than twenty years since this band had filled any auditorium, it was still a dream of most of the older women, and a great many of the men, in this audience to be noticed. To be tapped on the shoulders and have a backstage pass pressed into their hands. To be asked to stay after the concert because the lead singer wanted to see you, personally.

Julia swung around a grey-haired man with a goatee who was boogieing down despite his ample beer belly. The band was just crashing through the final chords of one of their best remembered classics. The singer conducted the drummer's crashes, pumping his fist again, again and again before spinning to face audience, triumphant and beaming. The crowd screamed and hooted and waved. Julia pictured the fifty-something woman, her red-rimmed mouth open and thumbs thrusting to the sky.

The singer grabbed his microphone with his left hand and looked out, then down. His wide smile faltered as his eyes caught those of Julia, surrounded yet somehow alone, bathed in light from the stage.

27

The narrow passageway was never meant to be lit in any fashion, and the tiny blue magelight highlighted to Bern why. He already knew it was a tight fit because his shoulders brushed both sides of the passage, but seeing the inside of the plaster lathe on his left and the rough hewn stone of the palace wall pressing on his right, barely two feet apart, made him feel a claustrophobia he hadn't felt in the pitch dark. The air was stale but oddly dust-free. Bern thought perhaps it had been spelled against it in the very stones so anyone using the passage wouldn't show the signs once they popped out in the library, which he hoped to do, if Marijel ever finished with her scribblings.

It was Bern's magelight but it was Marijel who was Listening to the people in the parlor so she could Compose the piece she was frantically transcribing from her brain into her music-ruled notebook. Bern watched in fascination as the black specks filled the page. He knew Marijel was Composing as fast as possible, but he still willed her to hurry.

12

It was when Louise started to go deaf that the music began. At first, she thought it was coming from outside her bedroom window overlooking the rest home's northwest lawn. She mentioned to the day nurse about the wonderful big band she thought had been playing in the gazebo just beyond her view and asked why she hadn't been notified so she could have gone down in person, but the nurse insisted there had been no band of any sort.

The next day, when Louise was walking on one of the wide, well-manicured paths through the woods, the music came again. She froze, and the just-turning leaves shivered in a breeze. There was no band this time; it was a single voice. A sweet, clear, single voice she had not heard in twenty years singing one of the silly songs he had made up for her as they made breakfast together, or lunch, or dinner, or while they folded laundry, or as an ode to their pet fish, or an echoing song sung in the shower. He was singing to her now, after all these lonely, heartbroken years. Louise sank to the ground and listened and cried.