"My honor."

Today’s the 23rd of December. I am about 45 minutes returned from dropping Kristin off at the Syracuse train station. I all but raced home from Armory Square, where I’d stopped off after the drop-off. Armory Square’s the more fashionable, brick façade and espresso shop part of Syracuse. My favorite CD shop ever is there: the Sound Garden. (In the spirit of the season, I’ll do a good deed and direct some web traffic their way. Seriously one of the better independent record shops I’ve ever been to.) So, credit card debt be damned, I picked up Sufjan Stevens’s Come On Feel the Illinoise, Bob Dylan’s No Direction Home – Vol. 7 of The Bootleg Series, Richard Pryor's …Is It Something I Said?, and Dr. Octogon’s Octogynecologist. Here are reasons why: Sufjan Stevens is a Brooklynite not much older than I am who, in all the fey ambition of his youth and faith, announced sometime 3 years ago that he would release a full LP for each state in the Union. Greetings from Michigan was the first, and Come On Feel the Illinoise is the 2nd. From a personal vantage point, Sufjan seems to be a sonic brother to me. The way he will throw mellotron, electric guitar, a string quartet, and a banjo together in a song that contains the following rhyme—“Stephen A. Douglas was a great debater / But Abraham Lincoln was the Great Emancipator”—that to me sounds a little bit like those poems of mine that make use of fold-up briefcase jet-cars from The Jetsons, huge golden belt buckles with embossed images of jumping fish on them, Confucius, goth kids, and military aircraft evasive maneuvers. That’s the kind of shit I love. The bigger the song or the poem, the more you can throw in there. And good on you if you can make it work. Which Sufjan does. The Bob Dylan is because no serious American music aficionado can be without a new Dylan release. (I still don’t have Dylan’s full musical catalog, I turn red to say.) “I Was Young When I Left Home” will probably appear on the mix tape I make in Jon’s name. (As will Built To Spill’s “Else” and “Bat Out Of Hell” by Meat Loaf.) Richard Pryor is because the man passed away recently too, and I’ve been wanting to hear the guy spout invective since I heard that news. I’m suspecting it’ll be an album Jon might’ve liked. (A good deal of the grief I’m dealing with is that there’s no way to know, now, what Jon would’ve liked. I had a hard time picking out a gift for him. I didn’t know him nearly as well as I wanted and want to. He was always excellent, if at a little bit of an arm’s length, but all of us Lobkos tended to be like that. He was a guy I was really looking forward to getting to know; there’d been so many intervening months of absence and silence between our hanging out in the same place, and during those months things happened to him and the kind of guy he was changed in ways I was looking forward to understanding with him over a pitcher of beer at the Silver Dollar Grill in the one-stoplight town of Camillus proper [i.e. not the stripmalled segments of Fairmount and the former Camillus Mall—now a Lowe’s / Applebee’s / future-Wal-Mart] ). And the Dr. Octogon because he’s supposedly one of the better rap lyricists ever. I’ve been looking for this album for a while, but it was always $18 and up whenever I found it. A better reason than the price for my buying it is this—and I see the Sufjan Stevens in this way too—and the Dylan, and the Pryor—all of them are consummate wordsmiths. I need their example. I was listening with Kristin to Aimee Mann’s best album in the car this AM. Same thing. Aimee Mann’s one of the best lyricists working today.

This is all so inane compared with all of the things that were in my head as I raced home, though, of course. This being the first real reportage-style post since the wake Wednesday and the funeral yesterday, there are so many things to record that I don’t know if I have the power to do so. Anything that gets my fingers moving, of course, will help re-convince me that words CAN get the job done, and that it IS possible that I can put those words together in the proper order.

*

Jon arrived today in a smooth pine box 10 inches wide and 12 inches high, with another inch or two for the base of the urn, which is (the base, that is) a little wider than the urn itself. There’s a nature scene carved into the front. A river meanders through a sort of sylvan glade. There’s a mountain out yonder, abutting the horizon. It’s not a bad image. Behind it are my brother’s ashes. Which should go without saying. But I figure that it’s important for me to state such things, no matter how obvious I and all of you know them to be. Saying things like “My brother’s ashes are in this wood urn” might even be the best sorts of statements to make. I’ve been making such statements to myself now and again over the last few days.

*

OK, all other ruminations must STOP for a second while I thank everybody. Because the amount of help and just sheer love we’ve gotten from everybody has been literally incredible. Here’s a stream-of-consciousness Thanks List. If you’re not on it, You Are Not Forgotten. My consciousness is just working its way around to you.

o Susie and Paul Manfredo. Parent’s friends from Buffalo NY, where we lived in a subdivision called Golden Gate. You have been my parents’ best friends for a long time, for reasons that are plainly evident for all to see, really. Mr. Manfredo—Paul, if that’s OK—you made me realize that there’s something may become more true in repeating it. You said, as we 4 Lobkos received you in Buranish FH before driving to St. Joe’s, something along the lines of “You’re in our prayers.” You said more than that, but that was a common refrain or final line to all of us as you moved from Dad to Mom to Missy to me. And something about the way you said it, with the same clipped delivery, made me believe it in a way I wouldn’t have if I’d heard it one time. So you made me understand the source of incantatory power, in a way. (Lord, listen to me. But I really talk like this, by the way, for those who don’t personally know me.) Anyway. Thanks Susie and Paul; you’re Good People.

o Christina Clemens, Mrs. Clemens (can’t quite call you by your first name, still), and Mrs. Neiss (ditto) and Mrs. Calandra (ditto again). The latter 3 being more parental pals from Golden Gate, and the first one being CC, my best friend from about 1989 when you moved into Joey Fundora’s house to late 1994 when I moved away. Then from late 1994 to about 1997 when Lauren Camaione finally helped me get over you, my feelings for you were of considerably more than a Best-Friend nature. (Quick aside: you always handled the potentially very awkward situation of how I felt about you and how you didn’t feel about me with utmost grace and incredible consideration. I’m stream-of-consciousnessing here. Maybe this should be one of my policies from now on too; Complete Honesty. A little “Open 24 Hrs.” sign to hang from my brain. Anyway, here are my belated thanks for how you conducted yourself in that situation. It impresses me more and more the older I get.) Hmm, I’m running into the “Whom Am I Addressing Here?” problem. Because you know what the deal with our friendship was, but these other readers in the vague dark auditorium of the Internet don’t. I feel as though I’m standing at a podium reading a long Thank You speech at a blinding shaft of spotlight-light, behind which I can’t be sure how many of members of this great gathering of loved ones are actually present at the present time. Anyway. It Means The World that you came, CC. I will thank you again in person, or in a more 1-on-1 way soon, but I also want to thank you so everyone else can hear. You said, as we were in the receiving line, that of course you would be here, that you wouldn’t have missed something like this. And while that’s true, it’s wouldn’t have been true for everybody. Which is to say that had I had the exact same relationship with another person, call her Girl X, and I had had the same history of best-friendship and infatuation and moving away and pining-from-a-distance with Girl X, and then Girl X met a fantastic Boy Y, and I moved on, and then Girl X and I lost touch, for like years, keeping vague tabs on each other via neighborhood rumor and 3rd-hand reportage and IM-away-message-checking, I’ve gotta tell you, I don’t think that Girl X would have showed up at Jon’s wake. 99% of other folks in Girl X’s situation would have done what Girl X would’ve done, which is to say probably not shown. Which means that I’m saying that you are no Girl X—that there’s something about you that makes you CC, who did show up, as sunny and open and loving as ever. Thank you.

I better shorten things up if I’m to get to as many people as need to be gotten to.

o My family. Which is to say the Filonoviches, LeBeaus, Gearys, and all of the various significant others thereto. At times, I have to say, I’ve worried about the sustainability of these family bonds between us, because, well, words have passed between us, and acts of no little insult have been visited upon some by others—I’m being intentionally sort of vague here—and I’ve been worried about how estranged we’d wind up being from each other. What this Event has demonstrated to me, however, is that all that worry’s for naught. One of the darkest parts of realizing this fact is that it took the Event to prove this resiliency. Nevertheless, I am grateful for all of you. For those 48 hours, at the swirling eye all of this Event-related grief, I felt a strange calm having you around me. As one who was at the nexus, the very core, of our congregation, I can tell you that we will all, individually and as individual family units and as larger Clans, be fine, fine, fine.

o Kristin Taylor. Please allow the following blank space to allude—failingly—to the appaling amt. of love and aid you’ve shared with me over the course of our long & storied relationship, which just this morning we termed “Epic”.










o Dan Graham, Betsy Barrett, Shane Donahoe, Mary-Ellen Lewis (I don’t remember: do you hyphenate?), Dave Cost, and those who couldn't make the wake but had their names signed to the flowers sent to Buranich. I have the card - it's upstairs, but I'm in the writing moment and don't feel able to get up to confirm all of the names on the card. It was supremely touching, guys, really.

o Other friends and families who've called or written or managed to pay in-person respects: Aria, Mr. & Mrs., and Lauren Camaione. Mrs. and Colleen Mangan. (Again, Colleen, that story you told about when we met was tops, and just what I needed to hear. Thank You.) Bobh McNamara, who's in NYC and somehow we haven't hung out down there yet. WTF? Anywho. Liz Harlan-Ferlo. Emma White, Beatriz Herrera. Dorianne Laux. I'm writing you personally in a matter of minutes. Jaime Green. J. Kracker, still in Australia and therefore most decidedly out of the country, but the person most likely to have driven to Camillus if he had been located anywhere on the North American continent at the time. Jeremy Gregersen. You're engaged, you dog! And you don't tell me right away! A light-and-quickly-passing-no-more-than-a-case-of-the-sniffles-grade pox on you, sir. A pox. Even the way you phrase things in your voice mails - simple 60-second reminders that you're thinking about me - reassures me that words work and words save.

o Phil Mathis, Jon's best friend, for turning out more than OK in the end. It isn't my place to be proud of you, maybe, but I am proud of you all the same.

o The Naval honor guard that provided for my brother an official military treatment. I have to research what the process really is for military burial services. I’ll do that in a moment. But you two men, who were standing there as the hearse and then my family’s car pulled up in the little oval drive of St. Joseph’s Church’s eastern entrance, Thank You. I don’t know your names. And there are some rules against our doing something or providing you with something as a token of our appreciation for your service. I can describe you, however. You on the right, you looked a little bit like Steve Carell from The Daily Show and more recently of The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Your face was not very well-composed—there was a tautness in the brow and a slackness to your mouth, which was slightly open when I did the possibly-taboo thing of approaching you to thank you. Then I realized that this face of yours was possibly more composed than anyone’s face besides maybe your co-honor guard’s face (to whom I’ll get in a sec). You looked very tired. You looked about to cry, honestly. It was as though you’d purposefully arranged your face in an expression as close to crying as possible, so that your face wouldn’t have very far to go if and when you did begin to cry. Which of course you’d never allow yourself to do. (Are soldiers chosen for funeral detail based on certain psychological profile attributes? Are they chosen on the basis of their emotional togetherness and all-around unflappability? Are those soldiers who’re apt for burial detail especially good soldiers when shit hits fan and mortars begin to fall – not to denigrate other soldiers, but are burial details soldiers some of the most dependable soldiers around, or what? I’m really interested.) But the fact that your face was like this, sharply juxtaposed with the by-the-book look of your white sailor’s cap and perfect military carriage, shoulders back and hands curved in that distinctively-G.I. Joe figure sort of way, it all filled me with affection for you first, and gratitude second. And the other guard. You were younger. You were an inch shorter than him, and your strategy of facial composition was different too: you had the taut mouth and constricted chin of one who’s gotten some bad news indeed but is still trying to smile. Which resulted in a sort of straight-lined mouth that was oddly un-straight: it seemed unstraight because it was so clear that there were so many emotions and living thoughts informing the facial expression. And you said—and I can’t believe this, still, even today—you said when I said Thank You for being present, you said “My honor.” I can’t believe you said that. That was the most big-hearted thing you could have possibly said. It was the perfect thing to say. Because you were looking me right in the fucking eye when you said it. And you smiled a little bit, just so, as you said it. The little smile and the eye contact conveyed to this writer and brother that you meant it. All of my Angry Young Liberal’s knee-jerk anti-military militarism just crumbled and scattered like old snow. Because you meant it. There isn’t space to get into politics here today. But, quickly, I have been struggling with the military aspects to this whole Event. Here are a few reasons why: 1) Jon didn’t like the military enough to stay in it. He’d gone AWOL, after all. Granted, given his mental state as it is currently revealed to us, he might have left behind whatever he’d gone to go do, if it hadn’t been the Navy he’d abandoned. But still. 2) Jon’s attraction to the military and things violent had given him the tools and the exposure to those tools to finally do what he did. I’m not saying that the Navy taught Jon to shoot, and the Navy’s therefore responsible, in part. No. That’s bunk. But the Navy’s presence still seems weird when you consider that 3) I think Jon was more lulled by the alt-metal “Accelerate Your Life” ads the Navy runs than he was by any notion of service or love of country. See The Onion for a killingly funny take on this idea. What got me though about the way you said “My honor” is that I realized, in the instant you said that, that you and I could have sat down at a bar and I could have told you about everything in the above paragraph—Jon’s falling-out-of-love with the Navy, and his going AWOL, and his uncertain (in my view, and only in my view) allegiance to military buzzwords like Honor and Service and the rest—I could have spelled all of this out for you at length, just as I’m doing now, and still, still, you would have said that it was Your Honor. And I still would have believed you, just as I believe you now. The honor question, for you, was one with a given answer. It amounted and amounts now to a kind of Unconditional Love. Standing there in the sunny cold outside St. Joe’s, traffic on West Genesee St. passing by, my brother’s body in the hearse next to me, I realized all of this very quickly. I Thank You for making me realize this. That it really was an Honor for you to stand outside coatless as the body of a young man you didn’t know pulled up, and his family, not knowing what else to do, still gamely trying to figure out how to feel about their dead son’s relationship to the Navy, stepped up to you and reached a hand your way.

You know, I’m really beginning to fear my inability to be concise. I read the eulogy yesterday and most of my trepidation came after I read it and I had to ask almost everyone who brought it up (I wouldn’t let myself bring it up) if the thing had been too long. (It was four pages single-spaced, with footnotes.)

o Father Bryan, who officiated, and Father Finnegan, who’s 75 but still hale, in my humble opinion. Even though you, Father Bryan, took something of the easy way out in using me to insert the requisite little bit of humor—which I know is easy to do, esp. when you look at that picture of Jon and I in matching red shorts at the poolside, he’s 19 or 20 and I’m 21 or 22, he’s in full bodybuilder’s mode and I’m well, just not—even though you did this, I want to assure you that I too laughed at your reference to this picture, and in with a good nature here now Thank You for your service. For the record, I disagree with the idea that “there are no words,” which was said first at our house sometime during the week when you visited us, and again at Jon’s service. Granted, I have struggled with this very issue of words and their power (lessness) as concerns an Event of this magnitude. But as I’ve been engaged in a process of re-establishing my faith in words, since the Event, and even though it’s been an up-and-down experience in terms of despairing in language’s inadequacy and remembering that only words will save me in this, I have to differ. Not to set you up as a straw man to knock down. After all, it was with words that you comforted my family and friends and Jon’s friends (Jon himself, maybe, too, I’d like to think). You comforted us in the extreme, and it wasn’t through stoic forbearance. It was through speech. So I’m making too much of a passing phrase of yours that doesn’t really represent the philosophical statement of grief-management I’m making it into.

o Sufjan Stevens. Thank You for Come On Feel the Illinoise. Somehow this record, which is exclusively about things related to Illinois, is right now giving me one of the more cathartic and resonant experiences of beauty I’ve had in a while. “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us!” is especially transcendant. I really do hope you find this entry in the course of one day Googling your name (it’s okay, everybody, we all do it. Googling your name is the new masturbation). And on that day I hope you’ll feel free to comment on this blog or at the very least, the very least, smile with the assurance that your music is a one-of-a-kind kind of music, and that it’s helping me with the Event in ways I can only begin to blog about. In fact, I’d really like to hang out with you sometime. I suspect we’d have a lot to talk about. But all the indie rock kids would say the same thing.

o There are so many more of you. One of my life’s abiding goals will be to give you all, each and every one of you, the recognition you deserve. Unless you tell me not to. In which case I’ll thank you privately. Lots of thanking to do. Man oh man. Lots and lots to do.