The suggestion is simple, “give up and walk away.”
I nod my head and say “if it makes you feel good to suggest it you are welcome to do so.”
There is a curse followed by a face I can’t see but I know the expression doesn’t contain a smile.
I don’t say anything because I haven’t any need to help them do anything but stew in their silence.
“Do you really want to put yourself through this?”
I laugh and say I have every reason to do exactly as they suggest, “give and walk away” because I have almost nothing but my gut to go on and notes from long ago.”
“You’re right. Things change and people change. The promises we make sometimes don’t carry us from point A to Z. Call me stupid if you want. Call me a masochist, but understand some things aren’t rational or logical. They just happen.
Sometimes you walk the line because you have to just as much as because you want to. I am expert at tearing down walls.”
There is a snort followed by “you might be an expert at crashing into them headfirst. You are a jackass.”
They might be right.
The question is asked without interest in a real answer but I could give one if I wanted to.
The response is simple, some things feel left undone and the echoes of the past reach into the present and the future.
My dear friend D, who left this world at 29 once said we have to accept that sometimes we never get answers to the important questions might counsel me to remember those words.
I can see him and hear him say it, but then again he’d appreciate the desire to stick with it and to say science deserves better.
“We don’t stop trying to solve for X because it is too hard. We don’t leave the equation untouched upon the blackboard.
We work and rework the problem. Adjust, adapt and pivot.
Maybe we never get our answer but you miss every shot you don’t take.”
Two decades later and all I can do is argue with his ghost or maybe my memory of him and who is to say that his comments wouldn’t be different now.
Life is not stagnant and changes take place.
The request is simple, “tell the story.”
I say we need to be honest and reframe it as “tell me the story” because not everyone cares. Not everyone is interested.
I could pepper your damn pike and or put a flamingo on the porch of every Johnny and or June and it wouldn’t make a difference to most.
But to some the difference would be profound.
Some would argue that some stories must be told and some can never be…told for general consumption.
As for me, well given all that is happen there are moments I am ambivalent because it doesn’t matter where it is shared, no one will care.
No one will slow down and take a hard look.
They’ll just point and say “you have a big meaty head” and roll their eyes.
Hell, some people have a curvy lip too.
There is a fine line between terms of endearment and insults, but don’t expect me to explain it.
Won’t tell you about the red dress or the blue dress, might tell you about the undress, but probably not.
Sometimes we just fucking miss people and sometimes we can’t figure out why or maybe we can and we just don’t care.
Life isn’t supposed to be lived like a Vulcan, it doesn’t have to be all logic.
But sometimes it helps or so we lie to ourselves.
I have several weeks of vacation I have to take or I’ll lose it.
Been dragging my feet on some of it because I was hoping for a magic solution to the pandemic that would make it safe to travel. Never really expected it, but hoped just because.
Since it is not happening and I am hitting a wall I took some of it or more accurately I will be taking it…soon.
I am ready. This I know because my brain is in that place where I figure it might be interesting to just say screw it.
Ok, I sort of live like that all the time but there are guardrails in place that keep the train from jumping the tracks.
Now I know I need those few days because the engineer is wondering what happens if we push the train just a little bit harder, test the limits kind of thing.
He is kind of thinking of a different give up and walk away. The kind where you send that train hurtling down the mountain and get ready to jump off.
It is like being a kid and pretending to be a stuntman, we’re not that old, we can still do it…right.
