Unfit for Facebook

There once was a man that took a vocabulary test online.  He had always thought of himself as verbally adept, even quietly priding himself in his depth of language.  Felt that perhaps it was something that distinguished him. After seeing friends from every era of his life taking this test he thought he would weigh in, too.  He anticipated proudly displaying his score alongside theirs to quantify the fraternity he knew they had always shared.

As he took the quiz, he felt like he was holding his own quite well.  But he must have been mistaken.  In the end the results that returned showed him lacking.  He was astonished to find that he had been living with his lexicographical superiors his entire life, it would seem.  He wondered if he had been holding them back.  Or perhaps they let him in their conversations out of some sense of lingual philanthropy.  He felt angry that they may have been patronizing him this whole time.  He felt perhaps he owed them an apology.

                There was a time, not so long ago, when he could feel his blooming intellectual potential and was thrilled to run down mental trails to see what mountain tops he might find himself bursting out upon.  Now he just felt caught in a brambles in an uncleared, overgrown forest.  How could he possibly tread any further without the proper mental tools.  And it was getting late.  And he had a list of unfinished tasks.  Dishes in the sink.  The porch needed mending.  And he was losing a game of chess.  And was behind on bills.  And there was a coffee stain on the same office chair he’d sat in for over a decade at work.

                As he sat there scowling, dark scribble over his head, considering the vocabulary score he was not about to post, he caught himself thinking of words.  Words he hadn’t thought of in a quite a while.  Words he wouldn’t let himself use.  Because children.  And pets.  And propriety. 

                But he was thinking them.

Run

I run because I can

I run because my body needs to move

I run because it strengthens me

I run 

Breath pouring over breath

Heart beating faster

A heart that can’t break when it’s 

Pushing to support the demands

Of my footfalls

Endorphins burning away edges that cut

There is nothing here but road

Running to nothing

Running away from everything

I can make it 

Another mile

Another day

Just run

It is coming, It is here

Sunny Fall afternoons always make me feel like I’m inside an art house movie.  Everything is just a little more thoughtful and slightly slower.  Just a bit more sensorially vivid.  To me, It feels like more of a beginning than the beginning of an ending.  Like waking up from a delicious mid day nap at that moment when you're still in the fog but a bit out of it.  Not wanting to wake up but knowing you must, taking the time to savor just a moment more.  The afternoon seems to hold all the fall moments that I’ve ever experienced together at once, back to when I was small.  All with that same vividness.  All gone, but not really.  They all crowd together with me in this sunbeam.  

In the 70s the sun streams in the kitchen window and my mom is baking.  Or I’m running errands with my dad.  Places with shelves towering far above my head filled with things I know nothing about.  Driving from place to in the station wagon, strapped to the passenger side of the wide front seat.  The sun pressing in through the windshield making it strangely warm as the football game drones on from the radio, saying things I knew nothing about—but doing it with bursts of excitement that I can’t help but be excited by.

In the 80s, early morning band practice, standing there shivering before the sun gets up and wondering if it’s worth it.  The mouthpiece stings my mouth and the brass burns my fingers with cold and I’m trying just to get through it. Then it’s Friday night and we march out onto the field.  I’m not even thinking of the people watching, they are too far away in the stands to matter.  The grass and the air and the lights and the uniforms are all in stark relief in the night.  The sound we make becomes the entire universe.  It’s electric.  And after, back in the stands, all the girls want to sit just a little bit closer to keep warm from the evening chill.  I’m not paying attention to the game or the conversation.  I am too lost in the glorious smell of their hair.

In the 90s I am walking with a little hand around my finger.  Watching little feet crunch leaves like it’s the first time again this year.  My eyes see through little eyes and the world becomes amazing.  I’m needed in a way I’ve never been before.  The tip of my nose matches the red in her cheeks.  Then comes the little him with the red in his hair.  And then another.  And then another.  Everyone is all here now.  We’ve been waiting for them all even thought we didn’t know it, even though they were all so unexpected.  The real adventure has begun, and it will more difficult and amazing and amazingly difficult than I can possibly imagine.  Bilbo, Frodo and me with our fantastical stories to tell.  I will sit by a fire someday and love these moments so deeply.

Now we have entered a new millennium 14 years deep.  We are living in the future we tried to imagine back then.  One to be full of moon colonies and flying cars.  I’ll buy my annual pair of gloves to keep my hands warm on the morning commute as I grip the steering wheel of my very earthbound vehicle.  We seem now launch every fall with the memory, tragic thoughts of a terrible day, but I have to remember to remember how far we’ve come because we have come so far.  I have to remember to remember what we’ve rebuilt because we have rebuilt so much.  Here in the future my little birds are flying away from my house that is now a deeper blue. The world is so much larger and more expansive that it ever has been and yet more in reach than every before.  The promise of technology didn’t take me to the moon, but it did put the vastness of the cosmos in my pocket.  Somehow seems just as miraculous to me.

I remember so much, and swimming in all that it lets me forget my burdens for a moment.

It all just makes me want to write.

It Was A Good Effort

School Day 1: The newly minted Freshman gets up at roughly 5 a.m. (at least I know he was on Facebook by 5:30), and is out of the house by 5:50 to meet friends at Village Inn for a celebration breakfast christening entry into High School.

Day 2: Up at 5:30 to prepare for first day of marching band, out of the house before 6.

Day 3: 6 a.m. no sign of the boy. Go down to his room and both alarm clocks are going off- -both music and beeping, both loud. Boy still sound asleep. I go over and shake him awake. He comes to life saying "owww!"

I say "What? What's the matter?"

He: "Man, the feedback in that amp hurt!"

Me: "What? Are you ok?"

He: Realizing where he is now awake, "Nevermind."

That was some dream. And one tired boy.

Another Poem from the Daughter

I feel like she was channeling Maurice Sendak on this one:

Fear me. I am Monster Blood
Yucky scary Monster Blood
I have no feelings, only fangs
I have no friends but I love games

Come and play with Monster Blood
Big and spooky Monster Blood
I’ll chase you through the moonlit yard
Your tremble when you hear me rawr

Run away from Monster Blood
Cold and lonley Monster Blood
I have no friends here, only fangs
And no one wants to play my games.

	Journey - Seperate Ways (Worlds Apart)
	Found at skreemr.com

My 13 yr old son was telling me this morning how cool it would be if he could get a band together to perform this song at a high school talent show in his coming high school career---I told him , "Funny, I had the same thoughts about this same song. . .whe I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL!" See how things come full circle.

Then he and my daughter both jumped up and started doing this rockin lip sync dance thing to it when I put it through the stereo from my iPod. I looked on so proudly---so obvious at that moment that these are my children.

Does anyone remember the Journey video game? That thing was too cool.

Remember the three big things going down today:

 

Iranian elections (I know I’m usually very non-partisan on this blog, but Go Mir Hossain Moussavi – say that three times fast)

 

Analog T.V. signal goes dark (and I can’t help but wonder how frustrated those far off space civilizations that have been watching the T.V. signal bleeding into the universe are going to be when they discover that they’ll never see the last season of Lost.  Maybe that’s what triggers the invasion!)

 

And, of course let’s not forget. . . today is the day that Facebook allows you to generate a proper URL for your Facebook homepage!  So get out there America and be creative.

 

(Psssst. . .I’m going to try for Facebook.com/cyberjazzdaddy.  You know, for consistancy.  Friend me!)

Why, Whyyyyyyyyy

Sigh---another brilliant Broadway moment that will have to struggle along without me.