Same As It Ever Was: Do I Repeat Myself? Very Well Then, I Repeat Myself

So ain’t we all inanimate, George?

–Jim Thompson, Pop. 1280

‘Je’ est un autre. (‘I’ is someone else.)

–Arthur Rimbaud

You might, you’re perhaps fond of saying, occasionally like something concrete from me, something in the way of true disclosure, painful confession, political opinion, or merely, now and again, a bit of honest biographical kibble.

You can’t love me, you say, if I won’t let you in. I can understand this, I guess. It might be nice if I could once in a while roll back the clouds and give you a glimpse of the actual flesh-and-blood man hunched over a sprawling jigsaw puzzle shot full of holes.

The truth –the unfortunate truth in a world full of unfortunate truths– is that I don’t honestly know who or what really is signified by the name Brad Zellar. I can sometimes manage to get far enough outside myself and above the world to get a clear look at the puzzle as it’s taking shape on the tabletop. I can see all the missing pieces, but that’s not much help to a man who doesn’t have any idea where those pieces might be found, particularly since the puzzle seems to be comprised of little but random patterns or, some days, a cloudless sky. Other times it resembles nothing so much as a giant abstract impressionist canvas, a riot of colors and textures that ultimately doesn’t add up to much beyond a series of vague urges and strange decisions utterly lacking in any apparent inner logic.

I fear that it will never add up to anything, never be finished, and never resemble anything that makes any sense or looks at all like what I wish I could think of as my life. Or perhaps the problem is that it looks entirely too much like what I think of as my life.

Mirrors, unfortunately, aren’t much help either. They’re not much help at all, and I avoid them at every opportunity. It scares me that I don’t recognize the face I see staring out at me from the mirror. I mean this quite literally; that man is no one I know, and I frankly don’t care for the way he looks, don’t like the cut of his jib. If I was half the man I wish I was I’d kick his keister halfway to Hibbing.

If that’s who or what I am, though, I apologize to myself, and to you, even though I don’t suppose there’s a damn thing I can do about it. It pains me to admit that my grandfather was a bit of a prophet when he told me long ago that I wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans.

All of this admitted confusion aside, I’ve racked my wracked brain for a few moments and managed to cough up a few personal tidbits that will perhaps help you to know me a little bit better:

I can’t begin to tell you how meaty I feel. Considerably meaty, on a regular basis.

Remember that insensitive remark you once made about my haircut? I’m not going to lie to you, it smarted.

I once saw my grandmother, drunk and wearing nothing but a sombrero, dancing naked in the backyard of the house she shared with my grandfather and my uncle Slim.

I have a cousin Rueben who once lost an eyeball in a shower mishap. Or at least that was the official family version of events.

My father was a self-professed visionary, habitually unemployed, who spent most of his days wandering the streets of my little hometown wearing a sandwich board that begged God for –depending on his (my father’s) mood– revenge, forgiveness, or inspiration. The story my father liked to tell was that he took a lock of my barren mother’s hair, buried it in the yard, and gathered together his no-account brothers. The whole bunch of them then spent most of an afternoon and long evening drinking Budweiser, grilling and eating Italian sausage, and pissing into the patch of dirt in which they had buried the lock of hair. Nine months later my father dug me bawling from the ground.

That’s enough for now. I’m tired.

Now why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? I feel like we hardly know each other.