Four or is it 500 hundred CDs sleep inside a cool painted cabinet and a couple of cases dreaming of a time when they’ll be pulled out and asked to sing their songs.
It is a collection that must be around 30 years old, plus or minus a few years.
Most were purchased by me but some were gifts and or inherited in relationships past and present.
When I look at the library of music they hold and the MP3’s that followed I see an archeologist’s dream.
A thousand years from now the Indiana Jones musicologist will grab some of the these songs I own and try to figure out what they meant to me.
Wonder what they’ll come up with or if they’ll be able to decipher what is mine and what I purchased for parties, gags, or college projects.
What Kind Of Support Do You Need?
Through the magic of Facebook more people have learned about my father’s illness and a bunch have reached out.
All have said they are sorry to hear the news and some have sent updated telephone numbers and said they are available to talk.
I am grateful and aware that all who contacted meant it.
A couple of the older friends who go way back have offered help but posed a question.
What kind of support do you need?
I told one guy that I would let him know and thanked him. Another gave the perfect response, “I am not a fucking mind reader, tell me what you need so I know how to help you.”
“You can’t give me what I want.”
We went bantered back and forth about whether there were or were not hidden meanings in that and then he said I was handsome but preferred women.
I laughed and told him the answer to his question is I don’t know what kind of support I need. I have a pretty good idea of what I want, but what I need is unclear.
****
There is no cure, at least not yet.
Wanting one isn’t going to make things happen any faster and though I will never turn my nose up at research or doing things to raise money for research I am skeptical about how fast things can move.
I don’t want to be negative or say things are hopeless.
Things aren’t hopeless, but it is not my nature to be pollyannish.
Nor is it my nature to walk around saying the sky is falling.
So if you ask what I want it is to not wonder and worry each day.
I want to just take it all as it comes and accept that I can’t do a fucking thing to change anything here.
I want to channel the energy into something positive and I want to say that I don’t want to join the club that some of you are already members of.
If I could I would be the guy that fights the bouncers to stay out and not to get in.
Tick-tock.
Who Am I?
We’re half way through 2018 and the class of ’69 is settling into our last year of being in our forties.
Many of us are asking who we are again the same as we have done at multiple junctures throughout our lives and I am one of them.
Is there Life on Mars and would I like it there?
What happens in a few years when all of my kids are theoretically out of the house and doing their thing?
Dad and I have spoken about this before, more than once but it occurs to me that we probably don’t have 10 years ahead of us.
I probably won’t get to ask him if he remembers how he felt before he turned 60 and ask any health related questions that may or may not come up between now and then.
Maybe it is selfish of me to say that it makes me sad and angry, but it does.
Since he has always taught me to not focus on what I can’t control I am trying to follow his guidance, but there are moments.
****
Somewhere within these posts and pages are a couple of stories that shed some insight into me but I won’t make you look for them.
Instead I’ll tell you about how when I was little I sometimes got a potch for misbehaving.
My folks will tell you I often responded by saying “I take this potch and throw it away!”
I am also the guy who at around 5 years-old offered to fight my father.
Why?
Because I got into trouble for something and tried to make a deal. I figured that instead of getting punished I could engage in some fisticuffs with dad.
All I had to do to avoid suffering the consequences of my actions was win.
So when some of you ask why I talk about fighting cancer, the Grim Reaper or Lucifer it is not just because I think it might make these posts more interesting.
It’s because your crazy author has always been willing to take anyone and anything on. The 5 year-old boy I once was lives on.
He still believes there is magic in the day and the night and that given the right circumstances anything is possible.
Put me on the court and I’ll guard Steph or Lebron and I guarantee they’ll remember me.
Speak Freely
More music flows through my headphones joined by memories and I play around with conversations I have chosen not to have.
Conversations that need to take place but don’t have particular or specific time frames attached to them.
They’ll come when it is appropriate to speak freely and they’ll come in their own time.
****
It’s cliche to put this song into the mix but it keeps creeping up on me so I’ll stop pushing it down and let some of it go.
The funny thing is it is as familiar to me as it ever was, maybe it is because I know what it means to stand on both sides of the fence.
Maybe it is because I feel the chains pulling both arms and I don’t know whether to just let go or wrap the links around my hands a few more times.
“Got to be a joker, he just do what he please.”
