Honesty

Got a couple of ideas about this one.

The Fall of ’74

I’ll never forget that cold blustery day in November of ’74. We were standing at the corner of 43rd and Lexington when all of sudden people started pointing. I heard some ancient fellow yell about the John Lennon of his time and wondered why he was talking about communists in America.

After the great Johnny Fitzgerald Kennedy had showed them commie bastards that they couldn’t park their missiles on the shores of some banana republic that was run by a washed up baseball player who couldn’t make the cut.

Anyhoo, I am standing there in the crowd when I see this fat, old man who is covering up his thinning hair with fedora, but the not the really cool Borsalino that the Hasids wore.

My dad says to me, “Jackie Boy, there goes Frank Sinatra.”

I don’t know what came over me, but I couldn’t help myself. “Hey Sinatra. I hate your singing. The Yankees suck and if the president had any sense he’d bomb the crap out of Times Square.”

Sinatra looks at me with contempt and snarls, “you don’t know Dick kid.”

I look at him and say, “Don’t go name dropping with me. I don’t care if you know the president. Go bore Kissinger and Agnew with your music and please ask my parents to stop hurting my head with those god awful tunes you call songs.

New Material Coming Sooner Or Later

Relax fans and friends there is new material coming.

Audio Post

The Lost Soul Mate

(This has shown up in search results a half dozen times recently so I figured I would move it over here. Might have to move some of the other links too. I figure I ought to take them and turn them into something.)

******

This is the next insert in Fragments of Fiction. It is part of a collection of short stories that I am thinking about turning into something larger.

I don’t know what it is about you that closes and opens, only something in me understands the voice in your eyes is deeper than all roses- E.E. Cummings.

“For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be” Alfred Tennyson

“There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.” ~ G.K. Chesterton

Some nights I find myself wandering beneath a moonlit sky watching and waiting for a sign that I don’t really expect to come but wish for with the greatest of desires. I often stop and stare into the night sky and remember what it was like to stare into your eyes.

I didn’t tell you what I saw in them, about how they twinkled and glowed. I didn’t say the things that I thought because I could see you already knew them. You, the song of my heart already knew these things because you were my air as I was yours.

It seemed gratuitous to try and put into words the secret language our hearts spoke. Better to sit in silence holding your hand and sharing a moment. I treasured those moments of silence in which we would listen to each other breathe and bask in our presence together.

A story of two souls who laid themselves bare for each other. Two who became as one and in the darkness created light. I sit here writing this with the knowledge that some will call it hyperbole and romantic drivel. They have never experienced the sort of intimacy and oneness that we have and consequently haven’t the faculty to follow. It is beyond their ken.

This is ok. I don’t write for them and care not one whit whether they follow. I write for you and for I. You are my lost soul mate and your absence is always evident. Sometimes when I think of you I think of Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca and wonder if one day you’ll reappear as she did.

But if you did reappear I can’t say that I’d send you off like Rick did. I don’t really know what I’d do.  I have often wondered if Rick really meant those things he said. You know what I am talking about,

Ilsa: But what about us?
Rick: We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have, we, we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.
Ilsa: When I said I would never leave you.
Rick: And you never will. But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that. Now, now… Here’s looking at you kid.

It is a movie, not reality so it is hard to say. Still, I wonder. Did he really mean all those things. I sometimes think that he was just protecting a heart that was still broken. You don’t say something like this and just forget about it. Or maybe he found that special something that allowed him to move on. That is part of the beauty of a movie, it is open to interpretation.

As for me, well I am in a different sort of place. Not really sure how to describe other than to say that all my options are open. I feel as if I have taken the first step on a journey to somewhere else. Can’t say for certain if these are the first steps to the time and place in which the reunion of lost soul mates will take place or if it is something else.

What I do know is that part of the joy of life is the journey and the mysteries that lie therein. So perhaps one day we will find ourselves staring into those eyes again. And if we do I am sure that it will be familiar and mysterious. There will always be that electricity when we brush up against each other here or elsewhere.

I’ll leave it at that knowing that you’re smiling as am I. The future beckons and I must answer.

Glade Crossing

I remember a time some years back when the former president of the Earl Warren Fan Club was cruising around Arlington and telling me about their life and the good people of Glade Crossing.

Things were different back then and we were all different people than we are today. I could tell you all sorts of tales about the wild things that we did and the promises we made. You would be surprised to hear what the law offices of Trimble and Schlatter were really like or about the time Bentley’s step son beat him up.

Sometimes I think about the stories that Brian and Beatle used to tell me about their weekends and the women they claimed to have had and I wonder if anyone out there ever told a normal story or if every one of them had to be exaggerated so that they would sound cooler than each other.

But most of the time I don’t think much about the collective moments from the past because my focus is on the present and the future.

If I look backwards it is usually because I remember something special and see potential for how that might serve as a foundation for later.

But that is a whole different story altogether.

It is not always easy to do that because sometimes there are people you experience things with and you never forget what you had and the opportunities you saw.

Some years back a dear friend explained to me that sometimes you have to have the intestinal fortitude to accept that you will never be able to find out what could have been and that sometimes all you have is your idea.

For a long while I thought that was solid, albeit painful to swallow advice but I have come to question it.

That is because certain experiences have made me wonder if maybe there isn’t more magic left in the world than we realized. Some things have happened that make me think that maybe it is ok not to rely on the tactile and to have faith in the intangibles.

Maybe lightning can strike twice. Maybe if you are open to possibility you can find opportunity.

I Am Here

It is not a game, a joke or a fabrication of any sort.

I am here.

Call it thirty minutes or so by freeway–a whole world closer than the airplane ride it used to require to turn telephone calls into face -to-face.

This is home now. This is where I live and where I work.

Everything has changed and nothing has changed.

There is a fog obscuring the view and my perspective is blurred and my head uncertain.

So I stand in the shadows where I can observe and wait because even though I might be interested in pushing ahead and rushing to see what might or might not be, I don’t have to run.

Don’t have to because I live here and I don’t know that running would make any sort of sense.

Hell, most things don’t make sense so I let them unfold as they will.

I wander outside and stare at the moon I used to watch from thousands of miles away. I look at the moon and remember how I wondered if you were looking at it too and if maybe that provided some sort of connection.

I still wonder about it, except now I know all it would take is a short car ride and we’d watch together.

Won’t predict a thing one way or another. Won’t speculate or engage in prognostication because it just doesn’t matter. Ten years ago I never would have predicted any of the things that followed so why would things be any different now.

Just A Few Tunes

The Search For Absolution Part 3

Part one is over here and two is here.

The months passed by and slowly I began to forget about the man in black and his tale. Intrigue only lasts for so long and even though his story had done a better job of capturing my imagination than most I stopped thinking about it

Absence makes the heart grow fonder had no bearing in our relationship, this guy had been a good customer and nothing more.

And then one day he showed back up and I found out that I was 100 percent wrong about not being curious any more.

I don’t know what shocked me more, seeing him pop up out of the blue or the realization that I wanted to know where he had been and what he had been doing.

+++++

He tilted back his beer, took a long swig and then said he got a job out of state. I nodded my head and waited for him to continue but he didn’t, just sat there staring off into space.

“Same city as her. Can’t remember the last time we were in the same place.”

Since he opened the door I decided to walk right in and asked if he had spoken with her because if he had ended up in the same city surely that must have been enough reason to contact her.

“Nope, I didn’t. She knew I was there and she didn’t try to contact me so I figured I would leave her alone. She knows how to reach me.”

And then for the third time since I had known the guy I broke my rule and told him what I thought he should have done.

“You only get so many chances in life to be with someone special. Why wouldn’t you take a chance. How do you know she wasn’t waiting for you to call?”

He smiled and said he didn’t but said that it was coincidence that he ended up in the same city.

“If it is meant to be, well I suppose we’ll just find our way.”

I asked him what that meant and he just smiled.

“Got a flight back tomorrow. I live there now. If she wants to find me she knows how and if she doesn’t, well I am not wasting any ones time am I.