The kid looks at me and asks if I can answer a question.
“Who do you write for?”
“I write for me first and sometimes other people.”
“You make faces when you write.”
“I make faces when I do a lot of things. I don’t think about it”
She looks at me I see a flash in her eyes, but she doesn’t share her thoughts.”
“You know, I am pretty good at figuring out things girls don’t want to tell me.”
“Abba, if they haven’t told you it is because they don’t want you to know.”
“Or because they want me to read their minds, girls are goofy.”
She rolls her eyes, tells me why boys are worse and goes about her business.
“Just remember I don’t always say what I see or think and I do a lot of both.
Today is a day where I wish I could conjure Lombardi’s spirit and express my displeasure with this quote.
I have applied an iron will against certain circumstances and repeatedly found the way barred. If life were like fantasies I’d be Aragorn confronting the dead when they say the way is shut, but life isn’t quite like that.
I could say I did my own Ride of The Rohirrim today but I didn’t even though it is my kind of approach.
Go back a few years inside my head and you can replay the tape of me guarding the 6’9 330 pound man on the court. A guy like that should be able to dominate me.
All he has to do is turn and hold the ball above his head and there isn’t much I can do or he can let me bruise his ego by suggesting he isn’t strong enough to back me down on every play.
He let me goad into him doing so and I took a beating on every play, but I outlasted him. I knew I had more endurance.
Two days later I still wore the signs and walked like a man who didn’t receive a trophy or accolades for coming up with a winning strategy, but I had the memory.
I still do.
It is still one part of a strategy that has continued to yield dividends, but not always.
Sometimes it doesn’t work and today might be the most recent example of failure. There is still hope that I am wrong and that things I set in motion will work.
All I need is for the moon to be in the seventh heaven and for Jupiter to align with mars.
****
The question about writing raises another in regards to honesty.
It asks how deep am I willing to go and how much am I willing to share here. Sometimes I think we haven’t come close to plumbing the true depths.
I can do deeper and be far more introspective and honest…but will I?
The answer is probably not.
I don’t feel like having some of the conversations it would stimulate. You can ask if that means it feels unsafe or if there are other reasons and I might say yes to both.
Or I might not.
