I was that guy tonight at the gym.
You know the one who let’s his barbaric yawp sound because I lifted what some would call a shit ton of weight.
It caught me off guard, I didn’t expect it to explode out of me, but sometimes that is what happens when you hear destiny call and you answer.
Got Florence playing right now and some of these lyrics make no sense and others fit in the familiar spaces and places.
For a moment I thought something was going to tear or break off and then I reached deeper, inhaled and remembered the days when I was called an uncivilized barbarian and let loose.
For five seconds I was the baddest motherfucker in the valley and the one guy you didn’t want any part of because fire shot from my nostrils and lasers from my eyes and then I was…spent.
Could have collapsed on the floor and started snoring immediately, but I didn’t. Dragged my ass to the locker room and leaned against the wall and thought about two of my great-grandfathers.
I was named for one and share my last name with the other and today I found more information about their lives in Chicago, but as far as I know they never met.
And they certainly never could have imagined that one day their great-grandson would be the guy in a Texas gym wrestling with father time.
Tomorrow will hurt, but I will smile.
Got something big in the works and I am doing everything I can to call down the lightning and to dance in the fire without getting burned.
If this works the way I hope I will have much to celebrate.
Dad and I talked about this moment a little bit, but we never got into the details because what is coming was unknown to me then.
All I had was a speck of sand and a belief I might be able to command the wind and the sea to help me shape this speck and grow it into something far bigger and larger.
If I told you my innards are on fire and that I feel like a creature is trying to eat his way of me you’d say it is because of the weight and I would say no.
That is not it.
I am still unbreakable in some ways and some areas, it wasn’t that.
It is the waiting for the storm that is coming and knowing that once they open the chute a two ton animal is going to try to buck me off and that even if I manage to hang on I’ll have to fight the king of the silver backs.
Fortunately I am a Taurus and experienced riding monkeys. I have a special banana and a plan…I think.
****
Spent hours working on a plan, reviewing spreadsheets and now have to wait to tell the story that surrounds the numbers and hope it is easily understood and that the tale resonates.
Never know until the time comes if the song you are singing makes another sing along with you or if they want to plug their ears and run away.
Thus far the rumor is that I have done something right and that this might lead to the golden road of devotion but I can’t and won’t count my chickens until they are hatched.
You can tell me there is hyperbole here and ask if I need to exaggerate in this manner and I’ll say yeah.
I have to blow off steam, have to let some of this nervous energy go somewhere besides pinball around inside my head.
If things don’t work work for whatever reason and they go south I am confident I’ll figure something out
Confident that I’ll make this speck into something useful, but why shouldn’t I try to catch lightning in my hands.
That fire may burn, burn, burn but I don’t have to let it consume me. I just have to take the blows and tame it.
Just have to hang on a little bit and answer destiny’s call.
At least that is the idea, got a few hours until I find out if I am the hero or the goat.
