Dear Friends,
Today is the first day of school.
Overjoyed. Ready. Happy.
Yesterday was one of those days…
Good stuff, not so good stuff…body aches and pains and weirdness. I don’t know what 53 is supposed to feel like. When I’m working on something cool, like meeting my students for the first time yesterday, I can forget about the stuff going on with my body. It’s not dire, which is nice. I’m just beat up.
There was a moment last night in the kitchen where I thought to myself, “This fucking sucks” and entertained the idea of taking a really nice, long nap. It passed as quickly as it came because I’m not ready for a nice, long nap by a long shot. Please don’t worry about me. I’m getting to the point here.
What it made me think about was how fragile we are in moments where shit is piling up or it feels like it’s just being flung at you. Sometimes it’s a combination of things that just have the worst/best fucking timing, depending on what angle you’re looking at it from.
I thought about different times in my life where I felt like the pain couldn’t get any worse. Getting your heart broken is a bad one. You feel like you can’t figure anything out and are worthless. Getting laid off from a job you really like and maybe even love definitely sucks. That one’s a double whammy, too, because you also have to figure out where the money is going to come from once the severance is gone. Being afraid like that is an ugly feeling.
I’m fortunate, though, to have always been able to figure out or just make a bright side. When I was younger, I had a lot of help and it’s great to know that as an older fella, it’s still there if I need it from some wonderful family and friends, my tribe. As I think about it now, I learned how to survive early and along the way, I’ve built some skills and shed a lot of bad habits.
Those come in many shapes and sizes, the bad habits.
*****
I was listening to the Damned yesterday as I drove to pick up Liam. I was thinking about how much I hope that Liam will one day love them as much as I do. He’ll be ready to fully listen to them in a few years. I think I was about a year older than him when I fully began to appreciate their stuff that came out after 1983 or 84.
Strawberries is a great record. I feel pretty strongly about that, too. If I was in prison, I’d probably shank someone who said otherwise.
*****
Once I was an aspiring beat poet…
Tick tock, tick tock.
Clickety clack. Attack?
Boom, boom bash.
Boom, boom, bash.
You’ve got a cramp in your leg.
You’ve got a leak in your keg.
You’ve got a double stuffed egg.
You’ve got a hat on your peg.
You’ve got a hat on your peg-ah.
You’ve got a hat on your peg-ah-ah-ah-ah.
So.
This little basket was quite full.
It was full of alligator stew.
It was full of crackers, too.
It was full of the other stuff you brought.
I thought.
You played disco music.
You played your radio so loud.
You played the harmonica.
You played “Whiplash” by Metallica.
On the harmonica.
On acid.
It was psychedelica.
It was a better font than Helvetica.
It was not better than indica.
But it made itself.
It made it-self.
Shelf.
Elf?
*****
See you tomorrow.
What is this?
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