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?
 

Two posts last year. Let's see if we can beat that.  Though I think the term "blog," is pretty much shelved at this point.  I can still look at these old entries every 5 years or so and catch a glimpse into my past.  I will save the stories of my son and wife; travels to visit family, and the desolate feeling of walking streams littered with beer cans for my personal diary entries.  Kept in small black notebooks, ranging in size and thickness; having both work related notes, thoughts on the day, and shitty, shitty little poems.
I grow more inward lately. Fake spats with nobody in particular. I don't actually have anyone to bounce ideas off right now.  I don't ever actually bounce ideas though. Even when I am with someone i usually listen then talk (not listening).

My runs lately take be besides the Harpeth River. Once while it was flooded I saw a blue heron doing its delicate one leg balance, anxiously watching the infinite out of its tiny bird eye. I was reminded again of my runs in Baton Rouge. How I knew someday I would look back at those first few years as the best times of my life.  Not that anything was happening but that I felt an awakening.  I can't describe it with words; though I am a twice a year blogger, my ability to form sentences has never been strong.

sketches

The following were found in a notebook left on the corner steps by a library branch I rarely visit:

Never made
anything.
you never made
a single thing.

I can really only imagine how, 10 years ago I loped around university lake, slowly, taking in young girls in small shorts, egrets roaming around; always one nervous eye towards me, another on the lake. Sun seemed to gleam from everywhere. I spent hours there reading, watching birds. I got to see pelicans wintering over there once. was it a dream or did I witness hundreds of birds flying in great circles above the lake, only to slowly return down, one by one, the grim look of accomplishment that can only come form a bird whose beak is half its body length. Why do I remember the runs?
I also remember the bench where I finished Suttree and the stoop where I finished the Crossing. I can sum up a chunk of my life with those two books though they only covered a couple of weeks.

Just a ray of light before winter comes.

I wrote a few lines today, trying to make a poem but it didn't work out. Here is all that remains from it:
the leaves blowing around on the patio made their own quiet, rhythmic music.