The people ask me if I remember when all we had were words exchanged via BlackBerry, Yahoo email and an occasional phone call and I laugh.
Cuz I hear the bells ring and the silent communication across the wires just like the Wichita Lineman and it gets louder all the time.
Been a crazy period of time because as I plan trips to various places throughout Texas and Oklahoma circumstances make it look like I need to add a trip to L.A.
The news made me snort because it’s another example of my thinking I had certain things figured out and just when I make a plan life forces me to change it.
Someone out to grab life’s manager so that we can have a word about this people planning and god laughing thing.
Cuz the thing is I know where I am going and much of what is waiting on the either side even if I don’t know exactly how I am going to get there.
Hell, if I spoke more plainly you might say I sound crazy and maybe I do, but I don’t care because this feeling comes from that place between the heart and soul.
Hit the gym for the third day in a row and will go back tomorrow and even though I haven’t been in years the muscle memory is there.
The body doesn’t much like what I am asking it to do but the muscles know their master and they don’t need to be trained how to move all over again.
They only need to move and as crazy as it sounds I feel a renewed physical strength beginning to run through me again.
Fear Motivates Me
Fear motivates me in a way it hasn’t in quite some time. I don’t fear taking on certain challenges but instead fear not going forward.
Pulling the weights down towards my chest is as intimate and exciting as feeling the lips of a past lover upon yours.
There is an adrenaline rush while you wait to see if that electric shock is still there and then you prove that it is and you confirm that you don’t just know things.
You absolutely know things and always have.
And maybe the ache of being alone and apart made time feel interminably long but it also makes you appreciate the renewal.
So the clinkety-clank of weights pressing together and the thump of them being dropped on the floor provide comfort.
A reminder of the home you haven’t had in far too long.
For the first time in forever it feels like I have moved some of the bigger challenges and obstacles to a place where they are just distractions and not immovable hurdles.
Time will tell if that is foolish dream or reality but I am betting on reality because I bet on myself.
Told the kids if you can’t bet on yourself than who can so I ought be able to take my own advice.
Another New Year
Received well wishes from relatives in Israel and London for the new year that starts in a day and smiled for a dozen reasons.
I am the oldest Wilner man from my branch but the greetings came from other Wilner men, several of whom are a chunk older than me.
Dad and grandpa definitely knew some of them but I wondered about some of the Jerusalem greetings from men who grew up in England but have been in Israel for at least as long as I have been alive, if not longer.
I imagine that dad and grandpa would recognize the names from old letters sent between my great-grandfather and his brother but those ended more than 40 years ago.
Today we communicate via email and Whatsapp for almost nothing, but back then, well it was expensive.
And letter writing wasn’t always so easy, you had to want to do it.
Some of you have received at least 10,000 letters from me but those are electronic and easy for me to do.
Had I been required to use a pen and paper you wouldn’t have received the same volume, not unless I had serious motivation.
And even if I did my penmanship would have made you work to read what I wrote. Maybe that wouldn’t have mattered or maybe it would have.
Certainly no where close to the ease of the Blackberry, Galaxy Note and Iphones of the last 15 years or so.
Life is one hell of a rush and I am grateful for so much, guess it is time to write more of it down so I don’t forget some things.
