Once again.
It's late in the evening and I closed my windows so those midnight trains wouldn't keep me up.
I listened to Kids on the Run and Like The Wheel -- because of the sentiment -- that almost unexplainable idea that nobody seems to understand. I've never felt so incompatible before. So, ideas that isolate me aren't outside the boundaries of the ordinary.
I sipped in equal portions and took care of the ones who needed attention and I put up with the foolishness of the ones who didn't.
I heard two things this week that shook me up, filled me with some sort of passing self-respect (a faux pas) and ended with my head on the pillow, my eyes on the ceiling and post-it notes plastered across my bulletin board -- catchy phrases and underdeveloped titles for poems and novels.
The two things I heard:
1. "You're the person everybody goes to man, you're like the leader of the group. I feel like a little brother to you and I lay in bed thinking by myself: 'What am I not doing right?' "
2. That is one of the things I like about you -- that you're going to get hurt -- that you're willing to get hurt for it.
How can I be a leader when I spend my time gazing out the window, through a nicotine haze, writing songs about missed opportunities across bridges that haven't been crossed. I'm no leader, I just listen and shoot my fingers out when I think I can offer a hand-up. But, all these refined and effective measures are incased in shiny glass that looks nice and remarkable, but paper-thin from another angle.
It's in those songs that I'll sing with a raspy off-pitch voice that mocks the zeitgeist i want.
In Estonia, he said "You're tragic man." and I laughed it off with false pride.
But, no matter how "tragic" rolls off the tongue, sometimes it's bitter being poetic like a joke and vulnerable and attached to the "what could be" rather than simply "what is".
It's the melting of the dream into the sea.
At night I make plans for a city laid down
Like the hips of a girl on the spring covered ground
Spirals and capitals like the twist of a script
Streets named for heroes that could almost exist
The fruit trees of Eden and the gardens that seem
To float like the smoke from a lithium dream
Cedar trees growing in the cool of the squares
The young women walking in the portals of prayer
And the future glass buildings and the past an address
And the weddings in pollen and the wine bottomless
And all wrongs forgotten and all vengeance made right
The suffering verbs put to sleep in the night
The future descending like a bright chandelier
And the world just beginning and the guests in good cheer
In Royal City I fell into a trance
Oh it's hell to believe there ain't a hell of a chance
-Josh Ritter
You're the real deal Mick...
ReplyDeleteKnow her name as Paradox. Embrace her, for you can't escape her. As you and she are of one flesh and spirit, Paradox is your eternal and inseparable mate.... the lover who brings both the explosion of laughter from your heart and the quiet little tear to the corner of your eye. Come to recognize her and love her as yourself..... as the deepest current of truth. Accept that she and you alone are ever present - underlying and authorizing all that can be known as real. You were born of her and into her.... and she of and into you simultaneously. She loves you unquestioningly and has neither the desire nor the capacity to betray or abandon you. Accept your inescapable role... to commit to understanding her, and to loving her in reciprocal measure. She and you alone are universally bonded.
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you... as you join the waltz in progress... the society of your contemporaries. Fully embrace your moment, your place in the connection of events. You're a fine young dancer in the great timeless waltz of the human experience... moving gracefully across the dance floor of time with your fierce and tender lover, that most subtle and elegant beauty, your eternal partner.... Paradox.
You're the real deal son...
Love ya'
DAD