Karhythms and Coincidences. Part Two

On Karhythms and Coincidence.  Part Two

In the summer of 1999, I met my future wife.  She was running with her group of like minded friends.  Her band.  One of them, a guy named Craig, worked with Shad, the guitarist in our group at an Italian restaurant, in the Gold Coast of all places.  It was one block from my first apartment.   Craig and Shad became instant friends.   Shad was playing his music in bars and Craig became one of his earliest champions, outside of the Joplin crew.  I’d seen her once at one of Shad’s shows.  She was seated at the end of the bar, watching him attentively and clapping after each song.  Later, Craig told Shad that his friend, that hot girl at the bar, really liked Shad’s music, that she was a fan.  I remember remarking that she was really attractive and that was a good sign for future fans.  I don’t know why I’d thought that.  Pretty girls attracted more guys, I guess.  But I remember being envious of his ability to attract women with his music.  I wished desperately that I would have studied music.  I still do.  (Of course for different reasons.)  One night Craig brought the girl in question, the first female fan, Colleen, over, with a couple of other people to hang out in The Crow’s Nest.  It turns out I was there, but in my bedroom with the girl I was dating at the time.  So she met the others but didn’t meet me. 

It would take a Bob Dylan concert to bring us together for our first real encounter.  Bob Dylan had become a link in a chain of karhythms that tied us to the beat poets. 

We purchased tickets to see Dylan and my mother told me that it was Bob Dylan’s song “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” that had been a source of great comfort to her.  Just the week before she had been struggling through a painful incident and she played that song over and over on her drive to Branson.   She had gone to stay a couple of days in her friend’s cabin near the lake.  She needed to leave town.  It was a sad time for our family.  We were all traumatized by it and my mother had told me the story of how that song had given her such comfort.  She hadn’t been a huge Bob Dylan fan, she was a Simon and Garfunkel and a Peter, Paul and Mary kinda gal.  It was the latter’s version of the song, I’m pretty sure, she was listening to on the drive to Branson, but we talked about how important Bob Dylan had been to music and so on and what a perfect song he’d written in capturing how she felt at that moment, about how much strength it gave her.  I found it strange that I was going to see Bob Dylan for the first time, having bought the tickets the same day she’d driven to Branson.   Bob Dylan was in the air, let’s just say.  Like the universe was saying the Bob Dylan concert was a significant event.  It was important that I was seeing him.  I can’t explain it. 

So it happens that Craig and Colleen among others of their group were at the concert as well.  Craig and Colleen came down to our seats to talk to us.  Only I didn’t know who she was at first, having had consumed many beers. I just thought she was some random pretty girl seated near us.  She looked different than she had at the bar watching Shad play.  She was wearing a homemade shirt and her hippy attire.  We struck up a conversation.  I was very excited to see Bob Dylan.  I tried to stress the significance of it.  I was still reeling from the idea that it was important that I was seeing Bob Dylan.  I compared it to going back in time and watching Mozart perform.  It was historically relevant that we were seeing this man in person.   At the end of the conversation I invited her to a party at our apartment. There was no such party, but I figured if her group showed it would then in fact turn into one.   She was very easy to talk to.  I felt as though I’d known her from somewhere before.  She was so familiar to me.  Traffic getting out of the lot kept them from driving all the way down town.  She still lived in the suburbs.  

I was directing a sketch comedy show in a small theater on the north side and invited Craig to come see it and to bring his friends.  We needed audiences.  So when he did arrive he brought with him Colleen, among other friends. 

Another concert had been scheduled for later that week, this time it was Tom Waits.  While I’m a huge Tom Waits fan, it had been a long summer of concerts.  I don’t like the crowds.  So I opted out and Craig ended up with my ticket. This we decided after my comedy show, at the bar across the street from the theater.  So Colleen asked me what I was doing that Saturday instead of going to the concert.  She suggested that since Craig and the boys would be at the concert that perhaps we should hang out until the show was over and meet up with them.  For some reason, I was under the impression that Craig and Colleen were involved to some degree.  This turned out not to be the case, but at the time I was leery of inferring anything other than a plutonic evening of hanging out.  A few days before Saturday, Shad insisted that Craig and Colleen were just friends.  Craig had a thing for Colleen’s sister Dawn, who lived in San Diego.  He was going to eventually move out there to be with her.  But still, I assumed the outing wasn’t a date.  One smaller coincidence, but one that helps me forever remember the date, was that my brother Josh and Shad were born on the same day at the same hospital.  It was August Twenty-Sixth. They literally met at birth in the paternity ward in Joplin.  It would take another eighteen years for them to meet up again. 

So on Shad and Josh’s birthday, August Twenty-Sixth, I took Colleen to my favorite Mexican restaurant, just down the street from The Second City in Old Towne.  I ordered a pitcher of margaritas because we were hanging out and drinking together.  I figured that’s what you did when you hung out with someone.  As I’ve said, she was extremely easy to talk to and she laughed at my lame humor.  The margaritas helped.  We bonded over our parents’ mirrored hardships.  She’d gone through something similar, but hers had ended differently.  As we were leaving the restaurant I stumble out the door, literally tripped on the rise and I caught myself on the buzzer outside on the wall.  It rang throughout the restaurant for a while before I could get my balance.  Colleen found this to be the funniest thing she’d ever seen.  I tried to wave an apology to the nearest waitress as we hurried away. 

The late summer heat still blanketed the air.  She suggested we go to the fountain in Grant Park.  We still had some time to kill before the concert was over, a lot of time actually.  We took a cab to Michigan Avenue and strolled through the park, talking and laughing.  When we arrived at the fountain, it was gurgling and dormant.   We stood talking, when a gypsy lady, at least that was my first impression, mumbled to get my attention.   She was hunched over and short, so I bent forward to hear what she was saying.  As I did this she stuck a rose into my hand.  I then realized, or assumed, she was homeless.  So I pulled out a dollar and handed it to her.  At least she was trying to sell something instead of just begging, I thought.   The next thought was that she could take her rose back and sell it again to someone else.  I didn’t need the rose.  But she’d disappeared.  I looked around and couldn’t see her anywhere.  Well, I thought, I’m stuck holding this rose now.  Honestly that went through my thick head.  Oh wait, there’s a perfectly lovely girl right there, maybe she’d like it. So I handed it to Colleen.  Now she wasn’t in my head and didn’t hear my stupid voice going through all of this.  She simply saw it as a romantic gesture.  So she grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me into her.  And just as our mouths began to explore one another’s the fountain erupted! 

As if on cue, the lights came up, the music blasted classical music, and the water shot high into the air.  It was just like the beginning of Married with Children.  What an omen!  Love and marriage indeed.

To mark the occasion of our first meeting we named our son Dylan.

Another karhythm happened a few years ago, but more recently.  I had written my second novel The Primrose Path and was very proud of it.  I sent out what must have been fifty query letters to agents and managers.   The ones I heard from all said they liked it but it didn’t fit with their agency or some variation of that.  I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I had an author friend of mine read my query.  She made a few suggestions but overall it was a good letter.   I was growing more depressed by the day.   In the meantime I had written a play for my brother Ryan who was living in Chicago.  He was acting and had been in a few plays.  He is very talented.   He called me with an idea about reincarnation.  For fiction reincarnation is a wonderful concept in my opinion.  It’s up there with time travel.  So after several phone calls I sat down to write a play that he could star in.  We figured he was in with an acting company and could most likely get it to them.   We had a reading at the theater with a group of actors and it was received very well.  I was able to really hear it for all of its strengths and weaknesses and I did some major renovations on it.   And then Ryan presented it to the producer.  At first the producer said he was interested in maybe doing the play.  But he back peddled around the end of the year.  I began to think the problem was me.  Perhaps I was cursed.  I don’t even know if I really believe in curses but I was in a dark place.  The producer, though he really liked the play, had booked the theater to another lady who’d written a musical.  He’d done business with her before and he knew her well.  Ryan was moving to LA at the end of spring.  His wife had taken a job there and, being an actor, it was time for Ryan to make the leap from the minors of Chicago to attempt the big leagues of Hollywood.  The play had to be done that spring or never.  It looked like I couldn’t even get a play produced.  The cursed concept grew as more rejection for my novel came my way.   Then in late January or early February my wife’s grandfather passed away.  I had given up hope for the play but it was still on my mind.  At the church during the funeral service my son Dylan asked rather loudly if the priest was Jesus.  It triggered a thought about God and my concept of God.   I began to pray.  But it wasn’t a conventional, “Dear God,” prayer.  It was more of a meditation and a chant.  I closed my eyes and chanted over and over again, letting my mind vanish almost.  Only the chant existed, “Please lift my curse.  Please lift my curse.  Please lift my curse.”  I don’t know how long I did that for.  I went to a strange place for just a moment.  Then the service was over and we all went to an Italian restaurant to eat lunch.   I was seated at my table when a text arrived on my phone from my brother.   “They’re going to do the play.”

Ryan had given the play to a director who he really respected.  The director had directed several shows for the producer and had a long standing relationship with him.  The director must have spoken with the producer and the producer decided to do two shows on Fridays and Saturdays instead of one.   The director really wanted to direct our play. He too was moving to LA and it would be the last play he’d direct in Chicago.  So, the musical would be the early show and we’d be the late one. 

The experience taught me a great deal about writing.  And working with my brother was a true gift that I will always have.   That summer I wrote another novel Devil Music that I am also very proud of.    It gave me a better understanding of writing multiple characters.  Imagining actors in the roles helps, for those young writers out there.   I don’t know if there really was a curse, or still is, and I don’t know if I was able to lift it long enough to get a play produced and therefore be afforded the invaluable experience of working with my brother before he left town for good, but then again, neither do you. 

Here’s a story that I like very much.   What’s it mean?  Probably nothing, but it’s interesting.   I wonder how many people you’ve been in close proximity to as a child or as a younger person, but never met until years later.   You’ve always been a younger person, though, right?  On a basic level it just means, we all move around a lot and there are hot spots where people gather.   You’re bound to run across someone you’ll later meet.  But I’m still playing what-if.  It’s fun.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285238/Engaged-couple-discover-paths-crossed-Disney-World-toddlers.html

I remember my family’s first trip to New York.   I was sixteen.  We decided to have lunch at the Hard Rock Café.  My hometown friends, Dan Dunham and Clark Rhodes were there.  Neither of us had any idea the others were going to be in New York City.  My family walked into the crowded restaurant and we were awaiting our table when I heard someone shouting.  “Hughes!”  “Travis Hughes.”  I was shocked.  I looked around and finally up to the balcony to see Dan Dunham, a guy I grew up with, one of my best friends, and another really good friend, Clark Rhodes, standing in the balcony waving to us.  They were on vacation visiting Dan’s uncle who lived there.  We were visiting the Italian side of our family on Staten Island but had come into the city to do touristy things and wound up at the Hard Rock for lunch.   We were a thousand miles from home.  Strange things can and do happen all the time; anomalies in the coherent fabric of reality?  But spend your days rolling dice and looking for patterns, eventually you will go insane.  Trust me.