A most violent year

Gunshots and whatnots from the calendar of the subconscious

It is one of the privileges of the good city of Paris that anybody may be born, or live, or die there without attracting any attention whatsoever.
    —Honoré de Balzac

Shots rang out at 12:48 a.m. Four of them. Firecrackers you feel in your ears, gunshots in your chest. We’d gone to bed, in a cute little room without a view in a part of Dallas the hotel receptionist called “still developing.” We’d satiated ourselves on smoked meat and Rhone wine and the best hominy grits this side of Tupelo. There was a day the gunplay would have signaled an end to the reverie. That night, it came as a too-early wakeup call.

“Life in the big city,” she said, with a laissez-faire kind of smile.

We’d gone south, to Frisco via Dallas, to polish off a kitchen renovation in the dubious chic of Ikea. We dropped a wad on a shelving unit before realizing three pieces of it were longer than our car. I sat against a wall, measuring the width, height and depth of my stupidity. The gift boxes—our presents to ourselves—are the code of domestic wrath: Maximera and Ranarp, Sektion and Gasgrund.

I felt safer in our borrowed bed, gearing up for the next round of shots. Perhaps they’re popping now, ringing in the New Year.

Where does the time go?

In January, Pete came into DoubleShot brandishing a copy of the Charlie Hebdo cover, a relic by design. I’d not seen Pete in ages (he lives in Holland and works in Ghent), but there didn’t seem any point in discussing the past.

In between Charlie and the Bataclan (on Boulevard Voltaire, of all places; Buffalo Bill performed there, and Edith Piaf, dame of another war), so much had gone wrong. Paris tried to somehow mend itself, and the world, by hosting a pretty death-defying emissions treaty. Instead of worrying about what it might mean for us, I dreamt … of an old horse, collared in a cracked yoke, dragging around a broken leg, begging to be put mercifully to rest. And then I woke up, as I often do, to some forsaken line from the Shelly West-David Frizzell duet, and neither of them from Oklahoma, it went like this:

I remember green eyes and
a rancher’s daughter.
But remember is all that I do.

In remembrance of things past … an early report of a Germanwings Flight 9525 in late March listed this fellowship of death: the wife of a high-ranking secessionist politician; two Moroccan newlyweds—one in possession of a Spanish passport, one not; an executive of a sanitation company headed to a food-and-beverage expo; the bassist of a Buenos Aires-based rock band, and her boyfriend; high-school exchange teachers and sixteen of their students; two international stars of opera.

There is a certain safety in staying grounded, until the earth moves under your feet. This was the year I stopped wondering at earthquakes and began assuming them. Gabriel, the Costa Rican kid who lived with us for a month, had a saying to cover such things: “It’s a miracle from the nature!”

In July, Glenn Martin of Monument, Colorado, was camping with his daughters in Pike National Forest when a stray bullet punctured his chest. “Ow,” he said, and fell dead. A few weeks later, we camped in the Collegiate Peaks area west of there. Stay off the trails, a camp guide from Texas warned us: Five hundred Polaris riders were kicking up dust in the 6th Annual Taylor Park RZR Forum Ride.

In July, at a birthday party and in self-defense, I took aim on all the children brandishing weapons in the dark maze of Laser Quest, whose dry-ice smell, blacklights and pulsing beats harken my dancehall days. We make up aliases and track hits on scorecards. Turns out, I am a lousy shot.

On the last Friday of November, we all went to El Rio Verde, braving the lunch rush in order to show Gabriel the meaning of Mexican food on North Lansing. Three days later, two guys walked through the same door, waving handguns and hungry for something other than wet burritos. I pictured our table, our chips, our luck.

Sitting in the dentist’s chair a week later, prepped for another crowning achievement, I watched Harrison Ford do a morning show and felt what it must feel like to see Jesus, speaking in parables and so many people hanging on every word and so much riding on it. Then I remembered his son, the one that opened a restaurant here yesteryear. From the “Chef Ben Ford” website:

“Following 9/11, Ben desired a way to make his style of food more accessible to the average American, and he experimented with Ford’s Filling Station, a place to enjoy real sustainable food with friends and family, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, opening in 2004.”

Ford moved his Filling Station back to LA two years later. Meanwhile, Star Wars product placement appears in everything from toasters to eyeliner. Beware the dark side.

For more from Mark, read about his Christmas tree tradition.