Two Thousand and Twenty Three

 These humble, less than manicured hands, typing words on the keyboard.  Do they not know what their owner thinks?  Do they think about each other?  When typing they hang so close; thumbs within millimeters of each other, often touching.

Oh cumbersome blog how did I manage....

 How did I go two years without striking out at you?  Has it been that long?  From long lines at the check out counter at the Memphis Public Library, as roaming the stacks, looking for books, and typing to no one...a true "blog."  But alas, <br>

It is June now in our year 2022.  Hot, extremely hot.  Volatile, even.  My body aches as all bodies must at a certain time in their life.  I choose sporadic wellness moments.  "Soft Bell," you breath in and out, right?  you look for the calming sense you gain when at high altitudes.  I remember carving snow with my Mom's sister and her husband.  Snow coming down hard, few people seemed on the slopes.  Trees lining the, I want to say "fairway," but this isn't golf...or it wasn't then.  <br>

I remember laughter, really.  Carving through the fresh powder and my uncle to my left and my aunt a bit behind me.  It was skiing as in a movie about skiing.  <br>

Now I look at my phone often, not that I didn't have one then, but now I look at it often.  When I am home my dogs greet me at the door, I stop into the front room to say "hello," to my kids and I look about for my wife.

ok ok...COVID-19 take 2

Here the father of two sits, entrenched in the great COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Washing his hands thoroughly but still eating stuff off the floor and obeying the 5 second rules.  Its sunny outside my office window and 200+ thousand people are dead.

Covid

The global pandemic put a few words in the mouths of pretty much everyone with an opinion and I have 7 minutes until a "Zoom," meeting don't we all and we will discuss new stuff and its the new normal, and of course it is, and check YOUR EMAIL, and walk away, but don't forget your mask and get a bite to eat if you can, if they deliver, and if they don't TRY CURBSIDE, and check your pulse and check your temperature and check your O2 and get a meter and wash you hands and don't have fun anymore, and don't take your kids to the zoo or the store or the gas stations and BE SCARED ALL OF THE TIME, and wait for the vaccine and WAIT FOR THE END and wait for it.


Just because its there doesn't mean you have to.

Three Twenty Twenty

In two parts:
1. Arriving late in the evening with slow rain making the roads nice and sloppy. A sneak to the gas station for a 24 oz can of beer, keeping it in the little paper bag sleeve even though I am no longer in a park and I am no longer 18.  Even though I am no longer 23 and practicing in a band, even though I am no longer 32 and mowing my lawn.


2. Coming home the next day and drinking two fingers of whiskey, smoking one drag of a cigarette only to stub it out and throw it away.  Then starting into the empty void and seeing the moon exactly how people saw it 400 years ago.  Or maybe not
2b. And what of it if I did?  Does it matter?  Heck yes I threw a cup of water directly in your face and right as rain I did a dance on your grave!

twenty twenty

A move is a move, regardless of who or what I am running from. There are still boxes left unpacked, there are still sleepless nights of regret, there are still fumes running around my head when i wake too early and i pluck the little stars and birds out of the halo and look at them. "What are you doing there?" I may say, as if I bumped my head from a fall in the night.  Tremendous flu struck at the beat of 8:00 p.m. new years eve this year.  And what fun followed as my wife and I turned about in our sleep sacks, alternating between sweat, fear, panic, chills.... My god those chills
I did manage to break 100 twice last year in golf.  I follow all of the majors now; i have favorite golfers.  I have bought new (ish) irons, I have traded in old wedges for new, I have no-longer-used clubs sitting in a dusty corner (something my brother mentions in the same breath as having children, your first car, and a pocket knife collection). 

What else...?  So the flu wrecked havoc on my physically and mentally. The fun depression of my 20s given way to a real darkness as I suck the ink off the black walls "make it stop," as if to say "enough."  Though there isn't really ever enough.  And my golf game, that old metaphor, it is as useless as ever (did I mention?).  Just plain useless; though I did manage to take my son along in a cart one day. I like to think he enjoyed driving about, though watching his father curse as one ball after another sailed into deep rivets of earth he had to be asking himself, much as my wife did the one time she saw be at a driving range topping ball after ball after ball, trying ever harder to impress her with mighty, heroic blasts, "is this really what he's been spending all his time and energy doing?"
Heil, Change!  I guess.  Not that you can stop it. But sometimes it feels like a circle isn't change at all.

And in the great tradition of near 40 somethings everywhere, and to the surprise of no one who has suffered the celebrated mid-life crisis, I have taken up golf.  I wanted to put quotes around that but I think from a correct english stand point it is not necessary. The quotes would remind the reader, me, about twice a year, that I have only taken up golf if that term means I stand on a hot course and curse and yell as I swing my clubs around like I am trying to swat flies off the ground.  My game is non existence. I tell myself that this is some kind of mirror of life; life is hard, golf is hard. But really isn't life hard enough?  Do I not get pleasure out of older hobbies?  Biking, running, weight lifting in the winter months?  I think I do.  There is often a sense of pleasure once a work out is over.  On long runs there is that mind interrupted feeling when you pause to realize you haven't been thinking the last half mile or so.  That is the mission accomplished feeling I always search for, often through booze. 
But golf seems to just bring annoyance, pain, aggravation. A truly weird game.  And yet, once every 10 times I get this perfectly laid, crisp, wonderful shot that reverberates throughout my body and into my head and makes me smile just slightly.  This isn't the thing I look back on like the old running blogs of my early Baton Rouge years.  No, this is just a grind.  A stupid, costly, meaningless grind. Somehow I have tricked myself that it is necessary. I have created little mini goals, none of which I have made.  Though maybe I have?  Maybe the goals were just to learn the game?  Haven't I made it that far.  That should be enough for year one, right?