I wake up every morning at 4:30 and the first thing I check is a newsletter, then the recap of the games of my favorite team. I love baseball, and Iʻve loved it since before Field of Dreams. I took a class in baseball called Play Ball! when I was in Little League, coached by the high school coach/tv color man for University of Hawaii baseball. I can send you pictures of me draped in Cowboys parapenelia from 52 years ago. My love for sports is legit. I knew I could write about sports when I watched a Phillies game in 1992 and didnʻt care about either team. I appreciated the pitcherʻs nuances. The shortstopʻs glide.
Kahoa
Brah, kahoa (ke hoa in songs) in Hawaiian. When I was that age, I knew EVERYTHING. No one could tell me shit. I read every book already. I knew you had the quote wrong. I snorted every line already. I took every shot already. I put my dick into every place they would take it. The realization comes more slowly. What feels good in the moment doesnʻt always feel good on Tuesday. Today is Tuesday. And although that wasnʻt on purpose, it makes a good point. Tuesday is always less than seven days away. You are an asshole. And you fucked up your only real job, evolutionarily speaking. Your kids should love you. It’s weird how patterns become patterns. I donʻt like my father. It feels like a burden to go beyond small talk. I look at posts here speaking about a father, what it means to be a man. My son does not like me. Shampoo. Rinse. Repeat,
Perfect?
What do you want? Perfect? Perfect shames and mocks you constantly. Perfect can’t happen more than infinity. Should I bother spending half my life learning how to spell words that no one ever uses? Would that be perfect? Would a perfect score on the SATs make me perfect? Dial down a little when you judge me. Full disclosure? I’m almost the opposite of perfect. My brain articulates well. Don’t confuse that with I know what the fuck anything means or what I’m talking about. I’m the same sapient primate that you are.
Irony
How can you understand me if I don’t understand me? You and I are strange animals. I like the way you look naked. I like the way look at me when you’re not wearing clothes. I like your breath and the way your hair smells. I like that I didn’t have to tell you to love Black Sabbath. I like less and less. But I like you. I forget how to use the word love without being ironic.
Nothing less
The thing about faith is that it requires so much more. On a good day, I trust what I’m told by most. On a bad day, I don’t believe myself. Good days are often bad and vice versa. Your eyes give you away, more than your I’s, which say even more. I close my eyes and trace the walk down from the apartment to the corner gas station, sweating in the near-summer heat of the Mississippi and holding the bleeding condensation of Busch in their plastic hearse as I wade back upstream to the patio where I’d wait for you. The first sips take away the heat of the late afternoon while you work, while your child naps, swims or bathes. The sweat congeals against my skin under one too many layers of clothing. The sips become slugs. The days pass. And I wonder if I have traded nothing less for nothing more.
Let there be light is a metaphor
All these mistakes I’ve made don’t exist, except in my memory. It’s past and just as fake as whatever I can imagine comes next. Only now exists. The rest is a mind-game-mind-fuck. I have tortured myself beyond any pedestrian waterboard (which, by the way, really doesn’t sound that bad, especially if you’ve bodysurfed the Wedge or Sandy’s). I’m tired of living in the shade. “Let there be light,” is a metaphor. It didn’t happen as the book says. It happens every second. Wait, this might be hard to wrap your head around, but seconds are too long. Every moment of comprehensible difference from the last. Nano-nanosecond. Every single one of these, whatever you want to call them, is a chance to let there be light. God exists, if she does, in minutiae. The smaller everything gets, the greater the change in our rules of understanding.
Eat butter
There’s a tribe. And I don’t have to taste your mouth to know if you’re in it. It’s not a cult.
I explained to my ex-wife once and I probably hurt her feelings but I wasn’t trying to. There is butter and there is margarine. They look the same. And that’s where it stops. This metaphor can be applied to most of pop culture. Hank Williams? Butter. Shania Twain? Margarine. Nirvana? Butter. Fall Out Boy? Margarine. Social Distortion, The Hold Steady, Drive-By Truckers, Seven Seconds, Bob Marley, Biggie, Loretta Lynn, Jack White, Gabby; the list is a long one. That’s all butter.
It’s okay to like margarine, especially if you grew up eating it. This is not a judgment even though it sounds like one. It’s an encouragement to eat butter.
Simple
This is easier. It’s always been easier. Imagine how much easier it was in 2007 when I didn’t even know you. That was a smooth, well-cobbled road. So I stepped off. And now it’s hard… er. Life is a thing. So simple. But simple eats your soul. And you seek more complex until you fuck yourself out of that moment of simple that you found. And then you do it again. And again. And again. And … you know where the story goes.
Close your eyes
Lives change lives. Lives beget lives. Lives are lost. You can promise on your life with a straight look on your face and lie. Love makes the potential for that lie infinitely larger and smaller. But when you promise on love and mean it, you transcend the promise.
Everyone gets sad. Sadness is part of the human condition. Happiness as a goal is actually a very recent concept for people. Survival trumped happiness for most of our existence. Losing something hurts. And that’s always been around. Of course, there is a very large spectrum of pain defined by the person and the loss. But losing that transcendence is not just sad. It’s a loss of self.
Watching a life erode: if it’s your life, whether you choose to recognize it or not is self-chosen, and sooner or later, you figure out what’s coming and fix it, or self-destruct. When love erodes, it’s not just up to you, and it reveals beauty and terror. It’s mostly sad.
Eyes opening are a blessing, and eyes closing are fear. And the final closing most likely means oblivion. This is a metaphor.
Hedonism
Perhaps I was drawn in by you drawling about your irrepressible, hedonistic nature. Supposedly nothing? You clearly melted my mind at times.
I don’t belong where I was. This is the way of the world. That’s where I met you, though. So now we have to pound through this. I’m not even going to stick my toe in the pond of yesterday to consider anything about retroactive motion. I want you to come, but most likely you’ll stay. And that is where you belong. This no longer troubles me.