12/23/21
It has been four days of sitting in foreign houses, looking out the window of my phone screen in awkward conversation. Alcohol has been fairly constant, nicotine from vape sticks, the occasional bit of weed from my father and my brother’s partner. My work phone has gone off daily, almost always at 9 am and 3 pm. It is alienating and grounding in equal measure. This was a return home, Odysseus back in Ithaca. Yet, no Athena has appeared to me as a beggar, and my own poverty is less a disguise than I would like to admit.
There’s an altar that sits across from me, holding foreign gods. Christ on a cross from Jerusalem, Guru Rinpoche from somewhere in Nepal, and a plastic Thoth made in China. Candles, incense, an empty book of woven fabric, waiting to be filled with visions, incantations, spells and words. I can’t fill it now, so I type on a computer, another virtual window to stare out at the world about me. When windows of glass fail to show us reality, we must look elsewhere to see some truth. Truth is never the correct word for what we see, but we use it when we must, I suppose.
I am home. Not my father’s land, not the grounds of my youth, but still I am home. I remember the roads. I know the bumps and speed limits without looking for signs. Elizabeth sees it clearly. She can still get around as if she never left it. Her grip upon the handle of this town is optimal, while my skills have rusted over. “Turn left at the third light.” she says without looking up from her phone. Her anxiety is rough on her, so she won’t look up from it in the car right now. She doesn’t need to anyway. I’ve seen my folks, my brother, but I didn’t go near the grave of the dog. I should see her before I leave, but I didn’t think of it, not while I was there. We sat around and ate, decorated the trees. John Mellencamp sang, “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus”, and my father reminded me how he listened to hip hop with RUN DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis” with his usual snark. He seems to be doing well, having recovered from surgery and the loss of his male virility. He was diagnosed right after I left. It felt poetic, I suppose.
The backyard was something I hadn’t thought about since being gone. The two dogs buried behind the fence, the pool that was a pond of leaves and algae, the ring of dirt which lost its hair to a trampoline that had finally recovered some green strands like the first sprouts of Rogaine treatment. The trees are all gone now. I remember toppling the last dead one years ago with my brother on one side and myself on the other. We tugged, we pushed, bullying an old man to give up his grip on a purse. The old man tumbled and crashed to the ground, missing the fence by inches and spraying bark and twigs all along the gutters and lawn. We felt like conquerors, like gangsters in old movies. Now it felt like burning your ex’s clothes, throwing away old notes from school, or painting over graffiti.
There’s a wood that used to grow the strangest creatures just down the road from there. Midnight on Friday the 13th in October, a gang of boys bolting back to the street, shrieks of pure elation and terror drowned out by pounding in our chest. It was seven feet tall, and crouching at that, with pointed knees that looked like horns as they reached well above its head. It had no face, only a slab of white flesh on a mannequin doll head. It didn’t move ’til we did. The wood is cleared out now as well, houses having been built on every inch of it. There’s nowhere for creatures like that to live now, nowhere to hide away some mystery. The abandoned barn covered with Pentagrams and swears is probably gone as well, its magic knocked down to make way for real estate. Maybe shelter is more important than magic, but that magic was a shelter for something I think.
The clay still stains my jeans and skin, and I don’t try to wash it off. There’s a little old lady that lives next door whose yard is now a jungle, swing sets over taken by kudzu vines, the kind that have to be burned back and still return in months. My feelings for this place are like that, I suppose. These wicked spirits and forest sprites, these secret specimens that worm their way through my being and root me into dirt, they get pruned back when I notice them. I cannot stay for long. Home cannot be man and land, for men die and land is just as transitory. Home must be something more mysterious. Home must be a place without time or space or being there. Home is empty of the trappings that we call Home. Home is a way of looking at things and seeing change, yet never quite grasping how it’s not the same as it was. Home is a place of going-to. The eternal journey homeward, carrying your burden, carrying that load, that hope of home and bed. Household Gods and your father over your shoulder, your son at your heels, ghost of Love Lost at your back. We carry home with us, as we wander forth towards it.
“But of course, this is the land of your birth, the soil
Of your own country: what you seek is close by and
Rises to meet you.”~ Holderlin, “Homecoming“
S.M. FITZGERALD
A musician, magician, poet, philosopher, writer, painter and researcher, in that order. He spent the majority of his formative years in small town Middle Georgia making experimental art and taking copious amounts of drugs in an attempt to reach artistic genius. At the age of 20, he read Aleister Crowley for the first time, and his intuitions were finally given a firm grounding in a metaphysical system. From then on, magick permeated his work, with his first album of experimental hip-hop produced with his group Nthman, titled Work Week, becoming hypersigil with horrendous power, leaving him struggling for several years and neglecting artistic ventures for monetary gain.
After years of dubious dabbling in creating art and music that would inspire and bring about change in his world and others, results were varied. A collection of poetry, several essays on phenomenology and magical practice, a slap dash of paintings and many musical ventures all saw limited release through the late 2010s, as well as foray into Gonzo journalism in occult subcultures.
He currently works with the Oklahoma based Shiny Rare Media, writing and producing music and podcasts, creates paintings no one else will see, and continues covering current events and pop culture from a magical perspective. He lives with his wife Elizabeth and his cat Menace in Detroit, MI.
