Seeking Destiny

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Born September 1969 in Lexington, Kentucky's University Hospital, which provided the only available free clinic; free being necessary, his family, poor.

Raised in Nicholasville, a small town stuck amid rich verdant bluegrass country, atop a crest among waving hills rolling along horizon's line, far from Appalachian mountains towering unseen, miles away. Shabby horse and tobacco farms predominated his surrounds, sheltering illegal moonshine distilleries, producing supplemental income and drunken abuses and heartaches for the few and far-in-between families otherwise tilling and cursing their lots in life.

Only one road ran through what Nicholasville considered its downtown, cutting through the ancient landscape like a meteor crash, providing sole means for vehicles to leave or go nowhere. James spent his formative years just off this road's pocked asphalt in a dilapidated one-bedroom apartment, more attic than abode, constructed haphazardly atop a failing business owned by careless landlords. When old enough to peer timid blue eyes over the ledge of the bedroom's sole window, through its smudged glass, seeing the unfolding scene of a nearly peaceful nothing, its fragile pane stood in place of a television, repeating the same episode.

His family couldn't afford electronics, a luxury.

As James grew, because of parental whispers, the roof above his sleeping space became a growing source of worry and young contemplations, as such may be for a four-year-old, about what it would mean to be collapsed in on. He found out, realizing his fear one stormy night while falling asleep to the rhythmic pings and slap-splashes of rainwater dripping into the numerous pans and bowls routinely used during inclement weather, strategically placed about the dresser top, floor and bed. For years following, whenever thunder threatened, he'd sleep facedown, pillow covering the back of his head.

James's milieu provided little in the way of entertainment, for a child or otherwise. But every once in a while he'd be treated to an ice cream at the all-purpose store. With every frozen sugary tongue coating, he'd glimpse a rare ray of sunshine, breaking through the otherwise seeming perennial smog of a stunted child's confusion, hinting at inarticulate shadows cast by developing hope that there may be something more to life.

Being a kid, he was optimistic, naïve, easily deceived.

James lived with his parents and (paternal) grandparents within the Spartan apartmental confines off and on like a camera shutter opening and closing, propelling captured moments jerkily through time. Living conditions were crowded, like a prison cell.

Nicholasville's economy, never being exactly steady or progressing, seeming to forever falter, shaking perpetually on the edge of collapse like an angst-addled adolescent, made work hard to come by. Impatient, James's father would pack his son and wife into the family car and drive to Florida. Finding employment there not much better, often-times worse, after a few weeks or months or a year of struggle, collecting measly pay for picking oranges or working on the occasional car, he'd drive back. Back and forth he'd go, his length of stays changing in accordance to patternless moods; happier driving toward hope for change than sitting still amid hopelessness of things remaining the same.

What James thus lacked in secure continuity, he gained in collected miles traveled over the open road.