“What are you thinking? You haven’t spoken in an hour.”
“Burn the bridges and salt the earth. Set fire to every structure we come across and introduce all who interfere to Mr. Mayhem.”
“That is a little extreme.”
“It is not even close. The next person who suggests I am overreacting or handling things in a way they don’t approve of will have a choice of a manual endoscopy or a dozen Ex-Lax brownies.”
“I don’t understand why you are so angry.”
“That is why we are done.”
Burn The Bridges & Salt The Earth
Some details are more important than others because they help illustrate the path that led us to the particular heights we may have scaled or fallen from.
The primary frustration of this particular moment in time lies not in what we did or did not do but in our having to deal with the consequences of what others did.
It is the coming beating that we may have to take because someone else failed to uphold their obligations and responsibilities.
There is no sly smile because you pulled something off knowing there would be consequences for your actions.
It is similar to waking up with the worst hangover you have had in years without the benefit of saying you had one hell of a good time the night before.
That is not what happened.
You lost the girl because your she mistook your pal for you and then you discovered your neighbor borrowed your car and totaled it.
It wasn’t your station car. It wasn’t the one that you don’t really care about because it is a a piece of crap.
No, it is the classic you spent hours rebuilding in your garage and it is not just a matter of lost time, it is the fact that parts you need to fix it are in such small supply it might be impossible to get them.
****
If life were like a movie this is the one where Guido the killer pimp showed up on my doorstep to collect a debt.
It is the time where you want to say you are Baba Yaga, ya know. You want to say you always were and that you still are.
So you pull out all the stops and use all of your motivational tricks because you can’t just lie down and the game isn’t over.
The inspirational quotes and clips from music and movies are there as are the quotes.
But the overriding parade of images come from the past and it is a mix of success and failure.
The victories outweigh the losses and you know even if you don’t score the winning basket this won’t be the end.
Yet this time is harder and the idea of losing is so bitter it feels like you have been asked to do the impossible.
The Trojan horse is already within city walls and the gates have been flung wide open.
There must be a place to make a stand and if you can find it maybe you can figure out a way to save the day.
Might be a brutal fight of block by block and or even house by house but it won’t take much.
Won’t take much to turn something horrible into something golden and that is the rub, you can see daylight.
Doesn’t matter that you are 10,000 feet below the surface. You can see daylight.
You don’t have to be Baba Yaga to make it, you just have to be you.
But they tied an anchor to your legs and made you wear a weighted vest. You probably ought to ask for help, but it is not going to happen this time.
Johnny is going to figure it out or he won’t.
Some Days
The workouts have been rough and have lacked the normal rewards. There hasn’t been the usual sense of progress and the feeling that even if we are not where we want to be we are getting close.
There is a fog that lies across the surface of the valley that obscures the view making it hard to figure out how near or far things are.
It reminds me of a scene from a movie.
You have seen it before in a bunch of different ways.
A person is asked to jump off of something but they hesitate because that fog obscures the bottom so that they cannot determine if the fall is 5 feet or 5 thousand.
Some days you have to remember and remind yourself that you can trust yourself.
You have to have faith.
Not in a higher power or another but in yourself.
Faith that you’ll figure it out and that if you fall you’ll be able to stand again.
Courage to keep going five more steps and the ability to remember that hyperbole sometimes works.
Tomorrow we’re are going to be the baddest motherfucker in the valley regardless of the results. Tomorrow we’ll survive.
