Sometimes you search for Jericho not realizing the place where you thought the it began isn’t and the ending you were sure took place wasn’t.
I met Jericho in a time and place that no longer exist. The people we were are long since gone. Now they drift through time and space in a place that I call memory or perhaps it is just my imagination. If you ask Jericho she’d probably push for imagination. She’d want to say that what I remember has been obscured by my own desire for the future. She’d tell you that it was never as good as I remember it.
But if you took her aside and caught her in one of those moments she’d admit that it was exactly the way I remember. She’d admit that as the queen of low expectations it is easier to think of things that way. She’d tell you that to really remember is too painful, too tragic. So old Jericho set up those walls, long and tall, deep and wide.
She lies in wait behind those walls waiting for the future to come. She lies behind those walls and watches the days pass in front of her. There are some really happy times, some good moments that make her think that she can do this for a while. Good things come and she smiles and thinks that life might not be exactly what she wants it to be, but for now this will work.
And me, well I stand outside and stare at the wall. I stand and look and wonder how they grew to be so tall. Too stubborn or too dumb to give up I continue my assault upon them. Every day I look for a way to breach them. Every day I search for a nook or cranny that I can use to start weakening more sections.
Sometimes I see Jericho looking out at me. Sometimes I see her staring at me, a wistful smile on her face. Sometimes I catch her shaking her head. She wonders if I am going to continue to live in denial about the circumstances that placed us here. But I think that she knows that I am not the sort to give up. I…keep….moving…forward….
I have a mental diary of the tactics I have used to try and breach Jericho’s walls. There was a frontal assault that was used to try and gauge the strength of the defenses. Some progress was made by eventually the defense asserted itself and we withdrew. There were flanking movements that had minor success, but still didn’t amount to much. An attempt to climb over failed as did the tunnel beneath.
In between the attempts I have continued to pepper Jericho with reminders of what could be and paintings of the dream. It has been slow going, but I am ultimately a patient man. Those walls will come down, of that I am certain. What I had to remind myself was that Jericho erected those walls for a reason. I may disagree with the reason, but the smart move is to bide my time.
A well planned siege can work. There is no need to plan my own D-Day.
So I remind myself that the current situation is just a moment in time. A moment in time that can become nothing more than a memory or it can become reality. With this in mind I have made a point of mixing up my tactics. Sometimes I withdraw all of my forces and take some R&R. Inevitably Jericho’s natural curiosity drives her out of the tower and she engages in her own reconnaisance. She always finds me.
Life may be a series of random acts but some things seem to be more than coincidence. It is a discussion that Jericho and I have had more than once. One day I suppose I’ll have the chance to look back upon this life and determine whether I was right or wrong about that belief.
In the meantime you can find me at my post watching and waiting. One day, one way or another those walls are going to come tumbling down.
When you reach a certain age you begin to think that eleven years isn’t that big a deal because it is not enough time to be truly significant and then you take a moment to think about and realize you might be wrong.
You could argue the reflection in the mirror proves much has happened or use pictures to illustrate some significant physical changes but those aren’t the ones that really get my attention.
It is the mental and emotional evolution that serve as comets inside the black sky of the places only the privileged few gain admittance to.
I am more likely to say nothing about my real thoughts and feelings than I ever was not because of fear but because I am more selective about it.
Which is kind of funny because as unfiltered as I am I still didn’t offer an admission ticket to most and even the very few who gain admittance rarely did get in.
Some of you read these posts and ask if I live inside my head and I ask ‘don’t we all’ but maybe I am wrong. Maybe I am the outlier and outsider or maybe I am just the guy who relates to Jim.
Would I Do Things Differently?
The emails come in with questions about the posts and requests for enlightenment but most are ignored because I haven’t time or bandwidth.
“Josh, you make it sound like you would do things differently. Is life really that bad?”
Every time I get a note like that I think about visiting the person and pouring Tabasco in their eyes or kicking them in the ass to ask if they think they made a poor choice.
Why?
Because the question strikes me as naive, dumb and profoundly stupid.
We make the best choices we can with the information we have and hope it all works out for us. Sometimes those choices turn out to be the smartest and best thing we could have done and sometimes they are the worse with the caveat that most probably fall somewhere in the middle.
I don’t have any scientific evidence to prove that but I like the idea and in a blog post that is based upon opinion there is no requirement for fact.
You’re entitled to agree or disagree, I won’t lose any sleep over it.
It is like the person who argued with me about who kissed who first, we both know the answer and I am not sharing it here.
This is a family blog… read by family by blood and family by choice.
I am living a life I never expected to live based upon certain choices that I would take a do-over on.
It is said without hesitation and without pretense, I would do some things differently.
That doesn’t mean I hate my life because I don’t. It doesn’t mean I am confident those other choices would guarantee a better and more satisfying life.
I can’t say for certain, but I suspect they might have.
I suspect in some areas it would be profound changes and I would have liked to have been able to do more than speculate.
An hour ago my daughter asked about a couple of things and I told her again about the impact of 9/11 upon certain things and the fallout from the financial crisis of 2008.
Those were not things I made happen or had real influence over but they hurt us. They had a big impact upon our family and there is no way to have predicted or planned for them.
So the do-overs I talk about might have still had chapters in which those played a role as to larger or smaller I cannot say.
No one gets through life unscathed. Doesn’t matter what kind of money you have or don’t have, some events hit you and you see the pauper is no different than the millionaire.
Access to the best docs isn’t a guarantee of anything.
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This post was supposed to go in a different direction. It was supposed to take some fiction and wrap some fact around it but life happened.
The man child who had his wisdom teeth removed today needed some help and certain emails came in that required immediate attention.
Some of them got said attention in the kind of way people don’t really want or maybe it is better to say I don’t want to give.
It’s the kind of stuff where I drive the imaginary bus over their legs, shift into reverse and redo it all 10 or 15 times. And then just to be thorough I take an imaginary blow torch to their crotch all the while making sure they don’t die an imaginary death.
No, I want them to understand just how thoroughly they irritated me and an imaginary death would let them off the hook too easily.
So now that I am fired up and extra irritated that my workouts aren’t effecting the changes I want at the speed I want and irked because the denizens of lollipop land have launched a blow pop attack upon me I am going to respond.
I’d much rather tear other walls down than the ones I have to focus upon. The others offer a much sweeter and long lasting reward, but sometimes you don’t get to make those choices.
Sometimes you walk the snake path and see if maybe those twist and turns lead somewhere better because maybe your box of Crackerjacks offers the best secret toy surprise ever.
