I could tell you stories about dames and broads and the differences between the two but if I did I’d have to have a soundtrack playing.
Maybe we’d go with one of the following:
From Russia With Love
Portrait Of My Love
The Air That I Breathe
Weekend In New England
It Was A Very Good Year
Or maybe we’d skip it all and talk about sitting at Farmer’s Market in West Hollywood thirty years ago listening to my grandfathers and the others altercockers shoot the breeze.
A mix of men who fought and or fled the Nazis and would swap stories about their time in the Pacific or Europe.
There was a mix of language with English flowing into Yiddish, Spanish and sometimes Italian or Russian.
Old men arguing about the whether Joe D was the best ballplayer ever intermixed with pushes from men fighting to support players they might have only seen play via the radio.
Sometimes I think about what those guys went through and wonder if they’d look at the challenges I have taken on and nod their heads with support or shake them with disgust.
Not that any of it matters because I don’t need their approval to do as I choose but there are moments where I think it wouldn’t hurt to have that cheering section around.
When I Think Of You…
Sometimes I think about writing a letter by hand outlining the stories that you never heard so that I could put it in an envelope and mail it.
Except the postal service can’t deliver to addresses like “For When I Cross Your Mind” or “Wherever We Go After.”
Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I got the answer I wanted and whether it would be shock or awe.
And sometimes I hear the echoes of the voices of those men and I smile because they told me you can’t plan or anticipate this kind of stuff.
They told me you play the hand you are dealt and make something out of them.
Sometimes those echoes bring lyrics to the forefront and I hear my only friends are pirates, I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping and We can be us, just for one day.
The Impossible Dream
There is a giant paintbrush in my hand but I can’t use it as designed nor make it work in a way that seems tied to its intended functionality.
I try to teach myself and to find a way to figure out how to overcome the limitations of my ability and imagination to use it to do more than sling mud at the wall and or splatter colors on a page.
It is easy to wield it as a sword and to poke, prod and or stab but none of those things do what I want it to do so I shrug my shoulders and try to relax.
Let life unfold and let the game come to me as I advise others and move with purpose.
I have gotten pretty good at slowing the game down on the court and making others play the game I wish to play. Gotten good at doing so that I can leverage the strengths I have now and not talk about all that I used to be able to do.
But sometimes I lack the ability to do as I advise others and wonder why I can’t just push the square into the round peg.
There was a time when it didn’t seem so hard to communicate thoughts and ideas.
A look and a couple of words were enough to tell a story and share a moment.
Maybe we are given a finite number of grains of sand to share and when we use them up they are simply gone and you can’t refill the bottle.
That could explain the whole pirate thing and the need to jump ship and sail off to parts and places unknown and unseen.
But then again there is a burning feeling in my gut that refuses to accept it and every time I look in the mirror that reflection swears it is not denial.
It is real and it is something.
But something doesn’t make a damn difference when you sit in a dark room and refuse to turn on the light.
****
There was a moment this week in which I did battle with another windmill knowing it was unlikely to provide the satisfaction I wanted, let alone needed.
So I set off on foot to go after the bigger game knowing the last time I did I got my butt handed to me.
Knowing that it battered and beat me and that this isn’t 0ne of those movies where the hero loses the first fight or two and somehow wins against impossible odds.
I might have been broken, but I wasn’t beaten.
Unfulfilled potential haunts me but some promises are forever. There is some truth some cliches, sometimes you need to rise up and roar.
Fake it if you have to, but roar.
