Twenty-Five Years Later

… If you wanted me dead, you should’ve just said
Nothing makes me feel more alive
… So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street
Crash the party like a record scratch as I scream
“Who’s afraid of little old me?”
You should be
Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me– Taylor Swift

Some people are surprised when they hear I enjoy a bunch of Taylor Swift’s work but they rarely have had a conversation with me about it.

I only know a small piece of her work but the work that has caught my ear almost always has grabbed me because of the lyrics.

Words move me. Words grab me, I play and replay them through my head and evaluate them against a gut feeling that rarely steers me wrong.

Twenty-five years later I think about the lessons of 9/11 and the massive changes that took place on a world, country and personal level.

I think about getting unfriended just before Rosh Hashanah two years ago and I hear Taylor sing and I smile. I can work that into a post, I know how to command words to move for me and make people feel things like Taylor does.

I see the responses.

… So tell me everything is not about me
But what if it is?
Then say they didn’t do it to hurt me
But what if they did?
… I wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me
You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me
So all you kids can sneak into my house with all the cobwebs
I’m always drunk on my own tears, isn’t that what they all said?
That I’ll sue you if you step on my lawn
That I’m fearsome and I’m wretched and I’m wrong
Put narcotics into all of my songs
And that’s why you’re still singing along

I see the reactions to the prior post and notice people are reaching out to others to seek me out.

In a different time and place I would have spent time evaluating and considering such things but that guy is gone.

Maybe he died in the hospital or maybe he disappeared long before that. Not sure about it and am not going to give it more than those few words and a thought about influences because that feels appropriate given we’re about to start another new year.

5787- Will We Be Sealed In The Book Of Life

A colleague made a remark about me the other day that made a half smirk roll across my face. He said I only share what I think people ought to know.

Can’t tell you how it came up but I clocked it because that was my father, his younger brother and my grandfather.

I hadn’t really thought of it as being a Wilner trait or characteristic until then. I am not sure if it always applied to me, but it does now.

You could ask questions and be told it doesn’t matter. If Dad didn’t think you needed to know you were unlikely to get an answer.

I used to fight doing or saying things that sounded too much like him because I had to be my own man. That stopped a long time ago because I recognized I have been my own man for years.

I have my share of success and failures. My share of good choices and bad. I own them and am mostly comfortable with them.

****

If you are among the fans who read these words on a regular basis you know about my four day hospital adventure. You know how I shredded the tendon in my left arm and you might know how much time I have focused on rebuilding my body.

It has been a challenging year in some ways and it is fair to say I have raged against the dying of the light.

Sometimes I think about that moment when I saw my father on the other side of the door. I think about the conversations I would have with him now about it.

I think about thanking him for protecting me and I think about asking if he knew how angry holding that shut would make me.

If he really was there, if really was able to come from the other side to help did he have to use that particular method. Didn’t he have access to some other way. Could he have just shot beams of light from his hands and healed me.

When I look at the picture of us above I instantly recognize his expression and how he is carrying himself. I can still feel his hands and remember when they seemed bigger and stronger than any other.

And I remember when they felt ordinary because I grew up to have hands that were identical. What you see in that picture is exactly what is tapping upon the keyboard.

****

Made a point to read the post I wrote this time of year in ’25 and smiled cuz it is called Am I Older & Wiser Yet?

Smiled because I knew I referenced Unataneh Tokef and this video in it.

Every year I think about these words:

On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by storm, who by plague, who by strangulation, and who by stoning. Who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquillity and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted.

Who knew that things would go as they did. I had no reason to expect any of it. There was nothing different or special about me that would have made me feel otherwise.

If anyone asks if I would fight for my life I can say yes and point backwards because I did it. It’s not bravado, it is fact.

I am not happy it happened, I didn’t need to scratch that itch. I didn’t need to be able to say I really did think about letting go, but I don’t hide it.

I did.

And then I didn’t.

Once that switch flipped it wasn’t a question of whether I would live but what I’d go through to get to the other side.

It changed me in some ways and I think it is probably still changing me.

I tell my voyeurs that if you really are concerned about something you ought to try to connect. But don’t expect me do it. People who cut the string need to figure out how to connect it again.

That is not my job.

I tell people I am more blunt and more likely to cut out what isn’t needed and yet softer. I have more compassion too.

I am agnostic about whether there is a world beyond ours. I have been for a long time, but I am more confident in my agnosticism.

Doesn’t matter if I am right or wrong.

People will always come and go from our lives. Some may return and some may never be seen again.

My friend Naomi died the night I was taken to the ER. I think it was due to cancer or complications from it.

Statistically I know that same night lots of people died and lots of babies were born. That is how it works.

Call it an odd coincidence that she and I share that date. Like I said, there are lots of other people who do too.

But sometimes when I think about that evening and remember my father holding the door shut I wonder what was on the other side.

Was it an escalator with souls going up and down. Was it the proverbial pearly gates leading somewhere else.

My grandfathers were with Dad. Were there other friends and family hanging out there too. If I had made it through would my dogs have been waiting there too?

Or was I just hallucinating because from massive blood loss.

Doesn’t really matter, I am here and I have plans for the future.

Twenty-five years ago all those people in the towers, the pentagon and the planes had plans too. Their plans got cut short, mine didn’t.

I am grateful, each day is a gift.