It doesn’t matter if
Pete Rose considers Japanese baseball to be the equivalent of Triple-A
baseball. When a pitcher goes 24-0 with a 1.27 ERA, people stand up and take
notice. Throwing 183 strikeouts in that same season for the Tohaku Rakuten
Golden Eagles is definitely a way to get noticed and coveted by any league –
especially when that mixes well with only 32 walks in 212 innings pitched. It
doesn’t matter if it’s the Boston Red Sox or Sinking Spring’s little league
team. That’s some serious control and keeps the comparisons to wasting money on
Daisuke Matsuzaka in check – at least with regard to throwing lots of pitches that
lead to full counts as opposed to going into deep innings in a way that saves
the bullpen from some grade D 5th pitcher filling in a rotation spot
on the roster.
It
seems that after the recent major league careers / debacles of Matsuzaka and
Hideki Irabu, Yu Darvish has brought people back to believing in Japanese
pitchers again. It’s like people can envision reliving a Hideo Nomo no-hitter
all over again because the 18-6, 1.44, and 276 strikeouts with the Hokkaido
Nippon Ham Fighters translated similarly into the major leagues (despite only
having 13 wins with an underperforming Rangers team last year). Getting those
277 strikeouts and 2.83 ERA in the United States truly does set him in well
with tough critics like Pete Rose, who really gives nothing to anyone – at least
that isn’t earned against someone like him. Nearly throwing an opening day
perfect game in 2013 against the glorified Single-A Astros is also a bonus with
American fans looking to believe in import technology. The sky is certainly the
limit for Japanese phenoms who are burdened with large financial requirements
before it even comes to paying the player, and for that, the fact that they can
handle the pressure in America means that baseball is a global game now that it’s
worth investing in them and their former owners.
As
for Cuban hitters with fiery tempers and unpredictable comings and goings, the
jury is still out, but the benefit / cost analysis seems to encourage teams to
still consider it.
Nevertheless,
with that being said, whether it’s a flash in the pan American pitcher looking
to translate above average abilities with a left arm into baseball gold or if
it’s a half Japanese / Iranian import moving to the states, it’s good to be
wanted. Everyone knows what last season’s free agents got because it’s public
on ESPN. For that matter, it’s even
better when you’re the newer model of the last foreign import breakout
sensation and someone shows $175million reasons to want you (and all but
$20million of those go to you over the next 6 years). It’s good to be loved and
appreciated in that you know that you are an integral part of a team. When you
get the ball every 5th game, you know that’s a good sign. When
you’re pegged to be a front of the rotation starter, you know that’s really
good, too.
It’s nice to be
loved.
Yes,
it’s nice to be Masahiro Tanaka when he can talk about how much more one suitor
loved him than all of the others. And we believe him when he says how those
deep-pocketed suitors from Gotham really wanted him. It’s nice to go into an
interview and instead of having to explain “why I want to work for you,” you
have to explain why you want me to work for you. The difference is subtle and
the Communist Manifesto would truly
exalt its greatness (as would the capitalist genius of Ayn Rand), but how often
is that really the case? Is this still the feeling for last minute hanger-ons
like Stephen Drew, Andres Torres, and Kendrys Morales? What does that say for
the graveyard of former names that are out there on the list of toys without a
home? More so, what kind of “thinking it over” does that imply for Barry Zito
and his inability to translate the ashes of his last contract into any interest
of taking him and his teddy bear on as a reclamation project this year? For
that matter, is there a league minimum offer that guys like this can get
because they don’t want to work at Sears (“Sears sucks, Crash”)?
No Lady Kenmores
here.
Nevertheless,
we don’t all get baseball money love, and some of those players who do get
baseball money love have to consider the enormity of their contract in historic
perspective – at least for the time being. For instance, for a time, it seemed
that Mike Trout would have to settle for collecting $1million at age 22 so that
he can play 162 games (and a few more in the post season, hopefully) for the
Anaheim Angels. I would kill for that kind of money. I’d name my baby after
someone for that amount of cash. Hell, I’d get a tattoo with a company’s name
and emblazon it to my body in a prominent position – not the face though – if
you offered me that kind of cash. Well, I’d do it somewhere on the rest of my
body if your company wasn’t inherently evil like the Yankees or some equivalent
of financially devastating / uber-violent industry that sells arms to the
Syrians or Al Qaeda.
But
yeah… what I wouldn't do for a cool mill.
Nevertheless, he
didn’t have to wait. Since Miguel Cabrera’s triple crown in 2012 and the one he
should have won 2013 (if not for an injury at the end of the season) means that
he didn’t have to further explain his alcohol problems to a team looking to
keep his power around for a 10-year extension (valued at $292million), Trout
agreed to 6 years at $150million. This allows him to get another mega-check
prior to turning 30, which if someone is looking to win Powerball twice, this
is a good way to do it.
Provided he doesn't implode, and right now, it doesn't look like he will.
And it’s nice to
be loved and have all of the right tools. It’s good to see someone getting
their just desserts. It’s great to know that his team loved him enough that
even with 2 other 9-figure deals already being paid out to under-productive Angels,
Trout still got his love from Anaheim as well.
And it’s nice to
know that the end of the story isn’t Trout being forced to concede to the
bragging that, “I was the first player who wasn't arbitration eligible to earn
$1million.”
Instead, it was
all just a waiting game, and now it’s over, and he doesn’t have to worry – as
if a 22-year old guy with a WAR that sits around 10 has much to worry about
other than keeping out of trouble (because we all know that trouble finds
people in the spotlight, whether they want it or not).
Trout looks good
with a halo on his hat, and he will continue to look awesome jumping up against
the wall and robbing home runs that Jered Weaver might otherwise allow. I
applaud the decision to let him encourage and motivate Albert back to glory. I
want to see him kick Josh Hamilton’s butt into shape as well. He is the future
of the game, and for some reason unbeknownst to me who would kill to have a
$50,000 a year salary from one job, a shoe deal that features a pair of
sneakers, hiking boots, and dress shoes of moderate price a year (or some kind
of benefits that include vacation, retirement, health care, life insurance, and
tuition reimbursement) to go with an office to sit in, a wall to hang pictures
on, and a business card with my name on it, I feel some connection for a guy
who can rob home runs from the top of the fence, flying up there like he’s
Superman. A guy with 5 tools like that deserves all of this money. All of those
stolen bases, home runs, hits, and runs… they cause me to stop my life and
think about their larger place in someone else’s universe even though most
people would say that they are traits that really don’t make a difference.
But the thing is
that for me and fans of the game like me, they do.
And as I think
of this, I think of what I don’t have, and it’s not that I’m jealous. I’m not.
I don’t have that skill set he has. I don’t have fast legs, a strong upper body,
marvelous reflexes, and the ability to hit a curve, which will produce a sick
double digit WAR or equally unbelievable VORP. I feel good for these guys, and I
spend my time contemplating the lives of Verlander, Kershaw, Cano, and all of
the other members of the 9-figure club to the point that they earn 9 figures
and have everything that they could possibly want, whatever that is.
It’s just that
at times like this when I step back from the casual conversation of baseball
money in relation to capitalism (at least without any discussion of politics,
per se), I have to put it into perspective.
What part of my
bills are Masahiro Tanaka and Mike Trout paying?
As I go before
the first wave of questions, I have to ask myself the question that I have been
made to hear:
“Is this a deal
breaker for you?”
I think of these
words, and I realize that this translates to “how low can I offer you for your
first big break that doesn’t lead to any promotions, any vacations for the
first year, and much in the way of benefits?”
This further
says “what will you put up with quietly to stay here and let me know that you
will be my employee long enough that I can justify the time it takes to get you
accustomed to this environment?”
“If you know
it’s never good enough, will you sludge on through the morass in the hope that
this new offer isn’t the old place in the hopes that you can be satisfied for
life in the same corner that we start you out in?”
What bridge will
you burn for 40 hours a week at one job?
What dance will
you do to make your timeline acceptable to me?
What diverted
opportunity will you take just to get in a new door?
Is there a place
that we can offer you to sit quietly and be obedient in all of this?
And if there
isn’t a place, what will you feel like then? Does it make you a failure if you
realize that 9.5 years of dreaming of a place at a specific table isn’t the
table for you? What if we tack another 3 years on? What does it feel like to
think that you assigned some specific value to all of this?
Somewhere in the
Toiyabe Mountains that came into view after the refueling stop necessitated by
the wrong turn and the field of Mormon crickets, I dreamed a dream. The sun
went down easy on a western sunset. The stars popped out one by one, and even
though they were hovering over Nevada, they were the same stars I saw from Lake
Almanor in northern California a few nights prior to it as I swam in the lake
and bathed in the glory of turning 27.
And at the top
of that campground that was located above Austin, Nevada, a forgotten
destination on the Loneliest Road in America (Route 50), I had a dream.
I would be a
teacher.
And this dream
was a satori of sorts. It was the Voice of God speaking to me about a mission
that I would fulfill. And somehow, this dream was actually realized – at least
if the dream was to be a teacher teaching in a classroom or at the very
simplest, a person attaining a teaching degree. I spent every day of my life
after this moment happened trying to find a way to make it real. I took the
essential classes and then some. I shook the hands, and I kissed the babies and
the butts all the way through college to get to those first few years of
teaching high school. I went on and on and every time that I thought I could
and would never go on, every time that an insurmountable wall came and I
thought I would never go on in the field, I still went on. There was always
another show to get up in front of and teach. There was always a reason. There
was always some voice in the past saying, “You influenced me to do…” or a new
pathway to a new voice that I could influence appeared.
And yet now it
all feels like some phony baloney assumption of meaning in an evening’s
daydream that I could have just as easily have abandoned as any other idea that
I’ve forgotten along the way. All of those books… all of those questions I
should have asked but never did… why did this one survive when so many other tasks
were forgotten to time and lesser meaning? I puzzle myself to answer that
because I am still trying to rationalize how to answer his question of “why
won’t anyone hire you or people like you full time?”
Is his whole
conversation all just a reason to urinate on the corpse of Obamacare, or is
there some other more profound thought that I am to take from this? Perhaps it’s
just him saying that he operates without a filter, but it doesn’t feel
inviting, even if it’s a test.
I wonder if this
thought went through Jackie Robinson’s mind when Branch Rickey hit him with a
barrage of potential insults to see if he had the guts not to fight back. I can
only imagine that it must have been there partnered to what does the General
Manager of the Dodgers really want with sending for me all expenses paid (a
thought that definitely allows someone to keep calm long enough to find out)?
I think of other
teachers who have abandoned their dreams in need of full time employment and
the magical mystery hope of such (and those others that must not have been able
to hold in the statement that responds to the attacks against them without
biting their tongues).
Is a redirection
of career with more college training for me the right answer? Am I OK with the
skills that I have if I feel that I need to go next? Should I wait this out
another year and a half so that I can give this more thought and say that I
have been in this educational world for a decade and a half?
Would my loyalty
be rewarded for dedication to the company, or would I be seen as someone who is
too afraid to take a risk?
Can I handle the
pressure, the stress, the entitlement, the abject hatred, the role of
authority, and the lack of permanence mixed with the lack of money or time to
spend the money that I have in a way that makes all of my time worthwhile? Can
I find a reason in this electronic list of things to do that say that here is
something that I was meant to read?
Of course, there
will be things that make sense, paths to lead people on, smiles that will greet
me, but will there be enough reason to make me stop my wondering of how I ever
came to Eureka, Nevada, in the first place, or is this all just part of the
road that I have been led on, a road that has gotten me so lost from where I
was originally intended to be?
Or is it
something else? Am I just meant to feel the words of Robert Frost and sit here
typing about telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence as the
shaking continues on and on and on?
Who was I meant
to teach? Is there someone who I was supposed to show the light? Is there
someone who will come next? Or was I meant to teach myself the greater truths
of life and writing?
Or was I meant
to experience the truth for myself as my words boomed off of the back walls of
the classroom and reverberated in my ears?
It’s funny to
say this now, but like teachers sludging through the daily grind of “where
should I be when the future is uncertain,” this all starts to feel like the
final remaining free agents pondering going on while refusing to consider
retirement.
“I can’t go on.
I will go on.”
Samuel Beckett
or Sandy Koufax…
We’re all
waiting for the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. If we give up the wait, we’ll
never see if he’s real or not, so we must keep the hot stoves lit through the
coldest of winters and believe in his eternal presence or that of chupacabras,
skunk apes, Grassman, pukwudgies, sasquatches, yetis, aliens, ghosts, and the
Loch Ness Monster.
But what if it’s
just not worth the wait and the time can be spent somewhere else focusing on
things that are real and not fantastical or the like?
In that, what if
there’s nobody waiting on us?
Carlos Pena,
Jeff Francouer, Jason Bay, Travis Hafner, Placido Polanco, Clint Barmes, and
Yunieski Betancourt… you all had such promise and talent at one point, but then
it just vanished, and now, here you are. Where do we go when we’re hanging on
to hope in spite of the reality of what comes next?
Jason Giambi
signed a minor league deal with the Indians just because it keeps him in the
game. There’s a hope of getting to the big leagues, but there’s the opportunity
to play most days – provided he’s not keeping some youngster from getting
experience that will take him to the big leagues and asking too much for too
little value that he offers.
And that’s the
point… it’s all a dream that used to be real and to some degree, it still is,
but it’s not the same as it was before. There are other great home run hitters
now. Paul Goldschmidt seems poised to break out with long drives over the fence
and the ability to plate runners as well. He’s for real. He’s done things for
me in the here and now. Can the return of Matt Kemp offer the same promise past
the initial 2 home runs and the hunger for one of the starting spots in the Los
Angeles outfield? Will he patrol the wall at Chavez Ravine or will he be
replaced with someone else who can?
When will their
days be over so that they can be moved to give room for some hot shot rookie
from Nowheresville?
And for who
Jason Giambi still would like to be, it just makes me remember the great dirtbag
Giambi of the fall of 2001. The memories of him screaming at his teammate Miguel
Tejada for slacking on the base paths during Game 5 of the ALDS in 2001 while
his future teammates looked at him salivating all the while for what they’d get
over 7 years ($120 million) as they came back to beat his A’s one last time. These
memories are long since gone (and so is his colossal efforts to not lose). So
too are the BALCO days and the unspecific apologies of what brought down a once
promising player.
Instead, there’s
a broken man wondering if he’ll get to manage or add to his home run total over
one more season, even a partial season as a bit player.
Somehow, it
doesn’t seem too different than what I feel now as I ponder what path to free
agency that I should choose for my future.
And baseball
fades, and it’s back in time to the promise of Jesse and Celine, which happened
somewhere in the middle of those years where I managed to live without baseball.
In 1995, they were a beautiful young couple meeting on a train in Vienna. From
a wild, what if of a question that was the “would you like to spend my last
evening with me” to an agreed wandering through early twenty-something
hopefulness, they became companions on a journey through one of Europe’s
grandest cities and into each other’s literary memories of potential and actual
love and sex and conversation and hope and promise and purpose.
What could they
do before sunrise? Where would they wander around to, and what would become of
their burgeoning relationship? Did it really matter? They were together, moving
deeper into each other’s hearts for what they experienced in a magical day that
would transpire before the pre-ordained division that was going to come all too
soon. The places only seemed to matter in that they were a European host
showing an American what her world was as he shared with her his ideas of love,
life, and philosophy.
The fact that
everything transpired on Bloom’s Day, that literary holiday when English majors
reflect on how James Joyce’s character met his wife in Ulysses, seems so intelligent and deep and somehow still so
irrelevant to anything other than some personal inside joke that everyone gets
(and isn’t that the point of all of this, too?).
Nevertheless,
they have their night, and the sun comes up and they say goodbye, and we wait 9
years to find out if they actually did anything or not (and they did – twice it
turns out). But it wasn’t the fornication and the nakedness of the moment.
Instead, their conversation was everything we hoped we would find in our time
during those early twenties. All night conversations to closeness and deeper
meanings were echoed our songs and our books. It was all so possible and
hopeful, and when it ended, there was love and an agreement to get together
again. Would it come? Was it even possible, or was it all just some pipe dream?
The goodbyes were hard, but the moment was magical.
And 9 years
later, it did come true, before the next plane ride, after the book tour
commenced, and there was more European hopefulness and dreams of what could be.
There was the connection and the memories and the tales of how they were to get
together again, but fate held them apart, but now here they were… bound
together in spite of death. Almost brought together in New York in the years in
between (though fate didn’t allow that) and animated together in the middle of Waking Life so the faithful could imagine
what it would have been like if the movie went further and the 2 of them had
their forever together.
Ethan Hawke and
Julie Delpy, standing side by side again in the hopes of what another time
together would be, were each other’s favorites until the sun went down. And for
the course of the movie, they had their conversations, European individualism
and perspectives to American destiny. The walk kept going, and the feeling that
it would all be over soon was there. Jesse would have to go back home to where
he began this tour. His life with his wife and child would begin again, as
miserable as it was before, as Celine’s neurotic quest for feminine meaning would
continue, and they would have always had this place in the Europe of their
dreams until they ended up in her apartment, Celine playing the guitar and speaking
in her best stage voice that, “Baby, you are gonna miss that plane.”
And Jesse just
looking at her with the grin that mirrors the final two words of the movie
while the screen vanishes into credits.
“I know.”
And like that,
nine years go under the bridge, and they’re back again for one final
installment where he ponders how he gave it all up for a woman with a guitar
and she gave it to him by throwing a game of pinball to let him win. The
beautiful beliefs of what made things what they were are gone and what comes
with them is the pain of real deal adult life. The hopefulness of youth is
gone. The “what ifs” of where will they be are gone as they are now married
with twin girls.
In 2013, Celine
is teetering on the opportunity of a great new job, a job that would see her
pursue her ideologies of politics as opposed to her love of Jesse. He, too, is
tortured by life. His divorce and separation from his son are weighing heavily
on his mind as he contemplates what he gave up to be with Celine. There is love,
sure, and there is a life spent together, woven into the memories and day to
day realities, but where they were dreams and memories of what could have been
had the airplane not divided them back in 1995, they are now images of pain.
Where they have seen one another naked and experienced unbridled passions, they
are now caught up in anger and frustration for all that day to day life has
done to them.
For the hope of
being together in passionate moments, a phone call can jar them back to reality
and leave them arguing and casting permanent attacks on one another.
In this, day to
day adult life is never as romantic and wonderful as the dreams that fill the
literary volumes read to mirror those times or the expressions of a life
together. If that was, it all vanishes after time and familiarity, at least
we’re led to believe by the day to day garbage that our lives pile upon us as
we go up our hills like Sisyphus, only to watch the boulder go down again, all
the while taking a part of us with it.
All of the poems
and songs that express those greater loves and connections do nothing to
express what it’s like to come home day after day in the hope that there is
still a wild vacation moment that can restore those days. In this, Jessie and
Celine are not too dissimilar from Pete and Debbie in This is 40 except that none of this is really funny. In fact, the
caustic expression of how the edge of marital dissolution plays out is pure
brutality. Played out like a Pig Destroyer song, we see the once beautiful and
idealistic Jesse and Celine eviscerate each other left and right. All of their
great moments are explosions of betrayal as their truths are now revealed as
far less real than the dream of it all ever allowed them to be.
For well over an
hour and a half of the movie, the characters clash against one another. Even in
the moment that seems to see them reconcile or at least set aside their
differences in the throes of sexual intimacy, there is a collision that stops
it dead in its tracks. As a result, the hate grows thicker and the words that
can never be unsaid continue to come out, and with them, there is a sense that
Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy are conspiring to kill the last
beautiful memories of something long ago.
At best, this is
Paumanok where Whitman’s beach features the drifts and remains of the tides
pulling in and out on what has washed through them and the fatherland that has
been returned to.
Where will life
leave us? Will we cling on or will be bob endlessly in the frothy cold ocean
waves and arrive somewhere? Will we be any more meaningful after the journey than
the shells and remains that litter the beach?
And just as I might
witness the death of a friend who is being gunned down in cold blood before me,
as I witness my own life’s revelation that nothing lasts forever and is as it
seems, I can’t stop crying. Even in the final few minutes of the movie, the
point where it has to end on some kind of note of possibility for resolution, a
resolution that is never shown (or maybe it is – we’ll have to wait 9 years to
find out), there is a sense that there has to be something in all of this
because for it to just end with walking out the door to the tune of 2 words that
say, “Just go,” there has to be a reason that all of this ever happened in the
first place.
Celine says, “Well, it must have been one hell of a night we're about
to have,” and with that, we wonder if it will be or if it will all be over in
the morning when the final throes of sexual intimacy that can only occur after
two people are tired of fighting and need some semblance of happiness to wash
away the day have occurred.
And
just like sex, it all means so much, and then it’s over as the racing hearts
return to an even keel and normal life is restored, and with it, so too are the
normal day to day responsibilities and meanings or lack thereof.
And for that, the
problem is that at this moment, there’s just no reason to ever think that all
of Jesse and Celine happened for any reason. They’re as good as done. My
romantic role models are washed away in the sands of time. The expatriated and
youthful Dan is long since gone. The trip to England ended on July 8, 1996. The
last vestiges of being lost and spontaneous in that dreamlike way soon followed
with the dream of teaching in the journeys through America.
Is that the next
thing to go?
Will that be the
last thing to go, or could there still be other things to lose and transition
into more lives that I can’t even begin to fathom?
Only time will
tell.
And as I think
of this, I wonder why this happened other than I made a lot of memories along
the way and they were necessary to get me from there to here or some future
there.
Like Kris
Kristofferson sang, “And it took me back to something that I lost somehow
somewhere along the way.”
Like William
Faulkner pilfered from Shakespeare, “Life is a tale told by an idiot full of
sound and fury signifying nothing.”
And as William
Faulkner himself said, “That past isn’t dead. It’s not even past.”
But the thing is
that in this moment, it really is. Nothing is the same as it was when this
whole journey started. It’s all just brutalized and ugly and no more.
There is no Mark
McGwire left in the game to hit some magical home run that will make sense of
everything. There is no come from behind 8-7 victory in St. Louis at the end of
one of the most meaningful summers of my life. There is no Kat in San
Francisco. All of the places that I saw are for the most part still there, but
there’s no Ford Escort to take me across to them as I think of Whitman’s poetry
while loving everything I saw as I drove as far down Route 81 as I could to get
to Biloxi.
It’s all gone.
Steroids scandals and lost friendships, hopes and dreams, connections and
frustrations, lost ghost worlds of the past and modern skyscrapers of the
future, and a myriad of other visions across the highways, bridges, and back roads
of an America that I never knew existed are dust in the winds of my life (dude).
There are still
pictures to prove it once existed, but in the time between, the only truth is
what is left to be pictured on the camera in the coming months.
But it’s hard to
think about that when everything here is a chapter in the American Book of the Dead. Here is a place where Jesse and Celine stand
in line with 3-foot coffins and an endless parade of bodies from this Dead
Generation (you are so far beyond “lost” that Gertrude Stein couldn’t even
begin to label you).
Simon and Garfunkel
sang about how “the only truth I know is you,” but for the truths I know, I’m lost,
and I’m trying to let them tell me “to look for America” since the truth is out
there, but it’s just so marred in this ravaged hordes that I’m wandering
through, so lost that I can’t even determine where they stop and I start.
And then I think
of the name I gave myself… the purpose in my life… the meaning of life for so
long… and I wonder if it was ever real or if some magic moment in time just
deluded me into believing, and that’s something that it’s not even worth
looking at in the same way as I once did.
And as I think
of that, I drift off into images of the dead black snow on the side of the
roads. The few images of beauty of winter are gone. The last few remaining
piles of ice clinging to the earth are a sign that spring will never come
again.
And this saddens
me more than anything.
But here’s the
thing… time waits for no man, and with that, there are hopes. And there are
places to look for to find hopes. There is still talent. There are still
literary moments and transcendent beauty caught up in the seed of possibility
that sits under the earth, waiting to push through and become the flowers of
April and May and June and July. And with that, there is still love.
I look into the
garden and I see rows of crocuses. I see a daffodil in bloom, and I see the
start of hyacinths, tulips, and daffodils and various other spring plants. For the
longest time, they were just hiding beneath the dead leaves of last winter. It
was all just about clearing off the death to reveal life.
Perhaps that’s
the message for me, too.
And I think
about that, and I know that while there is still life on this Earth, there is a
chance to find meaning in the big smile of a little baby. And even if some
lives last forever and some just flicker on and off like the stars in the sky,
there is more to life than the deaths we watch because we can reverse our
course. We can see the goodness in things. We can create our futures. I can be
someone to a 6-month old baby who just makes all of the other nonsense
irrelevant with his goofy smile and charm as he manages to accomplish rather
pedestrian tasks like rolling over and cooing and giggling since they’re
someone who is my direct relation.
With all of
that, all of the wanting to be needed in a job doesn’t matter because when I’m
holding my nephew, I see that I have a purpose and place in the universe in a
similar way to that I feel when I am close to my wife in the knowledge that
everything is real and right in what we have, and that for all the worry and
wonder, nothing matters because right here is solid and forever.
For this, love
is a good thing. It is all I know that will guide me through.
But when that’s
untouchable, there are the words that, “I’m not here. This isn’t happening,” which
are words that Thom Yorke of Radiohead states emphatically, over and over in “How
to Disappear Completely.” His reflections on a relationship’s dissolution may
seem parallel to the feeling that he got playing shows to two people before
fate decided that the evolution from “Creep” to The Bends to OK Computer to Kid A made them perhaps the biggest
alternative / indie band of the last 30 years.
And that is the
question… how does that break come? How does that moment arrive when we don’t
have to talk about the failures that we feel and experience while trying hard
to express why we are the right person for this place? How do we get the
patience to stick it out so that we can arrive at the next season’s opening day,
which was meant for us in the place that was labeled our destiny?
I’m not sure what the answer is, but I hold on, and with that, I keep believing in the good things in life.
I’m not sure what the answer is, but I hold on, and with that, I keep believing in the good things in life.
There’s no
alternative, at least an alternative that I want to feel.
I keep believing
in the star gazer lilies as I look to the heavens in search of my great new
answer.
No comments:
Post a Comment