Spirit

A country road. A tree. Evening.

by

When I started high school I didn’t have a strong connection to the world. It manifested in lots of time I don’t remember, wandering trails or playing guitar in my room. I wasn’t particularly abnormal in that regard but I was fairly disconnected.

On a particular almost fall day, instead of going home, I wandered into the theatre to poke around. From the moment I was greeted (instantly), to being put to work (also, instantly), to the connections I made that would ultimately define my trajectory into adulthood (pretty much instantly), it was probably one of the biggest life-changing decisions I’ve ever made.

I bring it up for a reason I will share now, and one I just realized that I MIGHT share later.

With the weather stuck in almost fall mode, and my work, particularly Capption, sitting at almost taking-off, and my family transitioning to a new paradigm, almost college, I find myself mumbling lines from the play that I heard a hundred times, thirty-five years ago. Lines I hadn’t read since until today, but somehow still remember.

I’ve been feeling stuck since vacation. Incapable of moving forward consciously but ironically, progressing almost everywhere. If I weren’t waiting for something which is currently unclear to me, I would look at the last several weeks with satisfaction, noting positive direction in almost all things.

But I don’t feel it. Like the cooler air that’s still humid and static, I feel like I’m fall in a summer suit, trying to establish a new baseline from which to measure myself but unsuccessful simply because I’m waiting for something to orient against.

Nothing to be done? Maybe.

I’ve been in these head-spaces before. I see a lot of the notes I’ve left for myself in previous visits, offering direction, solace, patience, and the occasional heavy bag to work out the stress. I know that I know the process. I know that I’ll find my way through, yet again. By every measure I’m better equipped for the journey of waiting.

I know already that Godot doesn’t appear.

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed.

Samuel Beckett (Vladimir)

The Midas touch, maybe.

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This place has moments that should be considered magic, except that they seem to happen frequently. Does that make them less magic being common?

They’re not identical in their magic-ness, but do tend toward similarity over the decades of years I’ve been coming here. if asked to remember a specific moment in a specific year I would hesitate. Shown a photo of that moment I could say with authority “that happened, 100%, final answer.”

Take this sunset. Maybe five total minutes of rose gold light filling the sky over a lake I’ve stared at for a thousand hours in my life. Odds are I’ve seen something like this fifty times before. God willing, I’ll see a few more. Still magic? I vote yes.

It could be that I need magic right now thus it appears. I’m willing to accept a universe that acts that way, though I would have questions. Maybe I’m simply opening the door in case magic chooses to stop by and say hello. Again, cool. It’s also possibly that magic simply lives here and waits patiently for me to notice.

My training tells me this is actually the answer. In that case, I’m glad I was here for it.


There is no greater weakness than stubbornness. If you cannot yield, if you cannot learn that there must be compromise in life—you lose.

Maxwell Maltz

Too windy to go boating?

by

Someone close to my family committed suicide Saturday morning. I don’t know how to process this fact.

We were close a long time ago. We haven’t spoken in a decade or more. He was an implicit constant in my life—I simply didn’t think about him. Now he’s an explicit and permanent constant—forever etched into the stream of moments and memories.

So here I sit in a place I hold most sacred, surrounded by the clan that I hold most dear, and I keep glitching out because I don’t know how to process this fact.

Fuck you.

That’s what you get from me today.

Fuck you for staining these things.

How can I even consider starting to heal when I don’t know the damage yet. The blast is still forming and the shrapnel has not taken flight.

Someday I’ll get through all the serenity and understanding forgiveness and restoration that comes from time.

But not today.

Fuck You.

Me

I listen to Don Henley radio now.

by

Aging is weird. It seems like yesterday every part of me was elastic, flexible, resilient. Now getting out of bed wrong can be a day limiting event.

I’m mostly ok with it. It mostly has more rewards than drawbacks. And truthfully, the gestation period for aging is long enough for me to come to terms with any particular change as long as I do the daily work of processing.

But some days the processing includes all the stages of grief but particularly denial. That and bargaining. I bargain a lot with my aging.

So when I open Spotify on any random day and find myself listening to Phil Collins, Glenn Frey, Genesis, Toto — the “Don Henley Radio” mix — I try not to think about it as the loss of my musical elasticity, of which I have some but much less than I did.

I chalk it up to acceptance of aging. And I am content.