I told a girl that she changed lives and it was like ripples in a pond.
She said she wasn’t sure and I said I was, never mentioning how we had changed each others lives though I immediately thought of it.
Wasn’t the time nor place to share that particular thought, but it felt a bit strange holding back when it is not how things traditionally have gone.
Later on I played music that I often think of in reference and thought about how very interesting the journey can be. I tried to illustrate that in this post and wondered how it came across, if at all.
Johnny sings about focusing on the pain because it is the only thing that is real and like he says I remember everything.
The mix of bittersweet flows through me and I think about the times when I wondered if others had any sense of what lay upon the other side.
Conversations past and present made it clear they did and that they went through their own moments, but sometimes you wonder because you are someone else and they are still right there or vice versa.
Sometimes you shift gears and put on other music and let that flow through you and it reminds you all is right in the world, or mostly right. It smooths the rough edges and provides a sense of hope.
Maybe it is something and maybe it is nothing, doesn’t really matter whether it is or isn’t because it is part of the journey and sometimes the most critical part is finding a place to sit and rest for a moment.
****
The damn machine didn’t work as well as it had been and for several days I began to feel the massive weights upon my shoulders pull harder and I wondered whether I had made a mistake with the settings or if it had failed for some other reason.
I thought about dad and said the old line and then I remembered it hadn’t worked out so well for him. So I figured I’d fool the Emperor into a state of complicity and called the experts and they said they’d remotely reprogram the damn thing.
“Mr. Wilner,Give it a few days and tell us if it worked.”
“Oh, you’ll hear from me if it didn’t.”
I said it with a smile on my face and dead eyes.
****
Music dedicated to those who died plays as I walk towards the rack of weights.
I haven’t been happy with the last few workouts, they have been ok but not amazing and I want amazing. I want to feel the Adrenalin rush that is so damn addictive.
Forty pound dumbbells in both arms are curled up and down with greater ease than in a long while and I wonder if it is time to stop sneering at myself in the mirror.
That is progress.
That is better than before.
But I am not yet where I want to be and the frustration with an aging body fills a small jar of rage.
“Accept this moment and understand you can’t do as you did. You aren’t who you were and not who you are going to be.”
The internal pep talk isn’t as effective as I would like. I want to push much, much harder because it feels like I am encountering walls and my nature is to rip them down.
But a double hernia and multiple nicks, scrapes and bruises along with mystery pains has made me slightly more cautious. Slightly being the operative word because in the last basketball game I ran through two people and dove for a loose ball.
I still expect my body to not break.
If I can’t be graceful and have to be good at demolition I might as well take my strengths and focus upon them.
Except time refuses to agree.
That scent from last night snuck into my nose today but I am not sure how. Must have been memory, might have been magic.
It is chemical…the response.
I try to keep a poker face and say nothing of it but I wonder if it is not obvious to some.
For there are moments where I swear I hear bells and expect it is not just me. It is not a new phenomena, it has been there for decades now.
Sometimes the bells go away and the silence sends me on a different sort of journey.
The quiet can be deafening and lonely but not always.
It can be also be where things are clarified and centered.
Maybe it’s necessary sometimes.
Maybe not.
When your air is gone are you really choking or are you developing different ways to breathe.
Maybe it is not really gone.Maybe it is left the room you are in and you need to move to the next one. Hard to say and maybe unnecessary to explore.
Sometimes it is better to just accept and go with the moment.
****
I drove by the old apartment from all those years ago and as always remembered a different life.
It was where I discovered the magic I had always suspected existed truly did and where I began to consider how to become a more serious magician.
A place where it became clear I could call down the lightning and dance in the fire but only if I accepted I had no control of the things I once thought I did.
Remember the post from yesterday and how a certain young man scoffed at life because youth knew better? That same man, albeit much older nodded his head and said that mumbo jumbo was real.
He was right and I learned it to be so.
Now I look at the rocks I stacked to mark the places I have been and think about how I pass by some of them on the way to where I am going.
Still have no precise nor definite ideas about where it will be or who will be there, just some vague notions and fragments of dreams.
The ripples from the past offer echoes into the future with no tangible proof of what that might look like, just the sound of a song and a sense that the only way to learn is to forward.
