Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

It is time for another trip to the cabin to still my quaking nerves and temper the shift of my lofty or scattered ambitions. I am stressed by the upcoming move and the shifting of time that makes me older but not wiser as I battle my apprehension and dismiss the fact that I actually graduated with a Ph.D. no less, but I can never appreciate my good luck or all the hard work that went into finishing the dissertation, many of it at the cabin. I pack a small number of records; we changed the rules this year, only ten, but both Donny and I are bringing more surreptitiously, unbeknownst to all except each other. We knew we each would and discussed it more than usual, sifting our collections for the unknown, we grabbed albums to introduce to each other like new friends.   After last year's AC/DC debacle, where he tried to play the discography and was shut down, the decision was made (by who?), in passive voice resistance, to bring albums that were near and dear to us and ...

Where do the years, weeks, and days go? I imagine they are stored in underground caverns loaded with greying filing cabinets. Or are they, like my writing, forgotten in folders and files. I often think of the nonfiction essays, the short stories, the uncracked and lonely novels I have started. Is it 1996? Is it 2004? The drafts remain unfinished. I put them off for work at the restaurant. I put them off for graduate school, theses, and dissertations. I put them off to teach course after course, telling myself that I will finish this year. I know it won't happen until I'm old and grey. Will it happen before I'm buried under an oak tree, green grass spreading over my unharried corpse.

Time once again emerges the winner in its perennial battle to change our hearts and minds, ravaging (perhaps, that's too harsh a word) along parameters that stretch from our youth to our deaths. What are these you ask? Only the old man himself knows and he's not telling. Winter fades to spring on the Elk River and the flood waters recede, streaming rivulets of mud and murk. I pack again for the cabin trip, like every summer since my summers began, excited, except for those few years in high school, when I fled from my parents, a high-minded but foolish youth, escaping into books and records, with friends. We surreptitiously visited the cabin on weekday nights, beers in hand, talk in mind. I pack and pack some more -- the right records, the right books, the right attitude -- looking forward to seeing the Elk overrun its bed or settle back into its groove, and anticipating the smell of the forest, the plants, the early summer.  I make my annual lists and call around...

Shiftless kids meander momentarily through air like  scattered haze of glass The shy night opens up, greying and uninvolved in juxtaposition to leafless (leaveless) trees Oh, what are seasons? Just shifts of time in orderly lives The weather between the banter, ceaseless and incessant like people walking trails on clear, untrammeled days Oh, what are the reasons? For this transient massing of time, of people, of indifference Shiftless, unmannered kids, playing games in the park through air of glass scattered with a haze of days

Dark, murky dusk on a river finds the boys around a raging campfire. Logs are twisted in sharp directions, poking precariously towards the graying sky. The music that comes out of the immense Cerwin Vega speakers is a crackly, tinny selection of mostly old school country and rock 'n' roll, interspersed with metal, punk, indie, and Deep Purple. The portable record player does its best to keep up with the steady stream of dust and dirt from long forgotten grooves. Drinks and beers are lofted skyward in respect for new friendship and ancient camaraderies. The whiskey mixes with the beer in an interminable amount of Krunt pulls, swigs straight from the flask, and attempts at shoddy mixers. Yet the music blares on, not impeded by the sound of a car door cracking or a drunken stumble through the mud to the far away outhouse. The night eventually winds down. A crack of light is seen in the sky. Political discussions, story-telling, wrestling on the rocky ground, will all drift seaml...