The Summer of My Discontent, and Blisters

Field notes, June 5th, 2014. Somewhere over the Mid-Atlantic, waiting on a drink.

The smell of hot asphalt in the summer and memories of a kid back there in the haze. I am unsure how to feel about it. Mixed emotions and hydrocarbons are uneasy partners. 

Tarmac bringing me back to the flush of adolescence. Summertime trip, foolishness of youth to think I could run across a quarter-mile of blacktop, barefoot, on pavement that might as well have been a cast-iron griddle hot over the coals. 

I did it. Because I was stupid in the vein of teenage boys, I did it. By the time I returned to the car I had blisters the size of walnuts on the soles of my feet. First day of summer vacation and I was hobbling like a drunk chicken. So much for impressing the bikini girls down by the pier. 

It means more to me now than it did that melted cotton candy summer. On the border between goofy little boy and awkward proto-man, I lacked enough confidence and self-awareness to be saddened by the realization that I was not going to get laid. 

I was fascinated, and still am, by maps. Girls were foreign countries in an atlas on the bookshelf, at that point in my life. Maps to be studied, pored over, committed to memory but never visited. The cartography of my puberty consisting of names, codes, symbols on paper. 

The female of the species. A puzzling, fascinating and undiscovered country. I knew them well, yet knew them not at all.

Jaguar Heart

Godl sits in the forest, quiet, dappled with gold light seeping between the leaves. Half-hearted rumbles vibrate the bones of his deep chest. The jaguar would weep if he could. A jaguar on the verge of weeping signals the end of the world.  Do humans know this?

The jaguar does not. Hot breath swirls over bared fangs as it wonders why it cannot howl out the loneliness in the core of its heart. 

This is the Hard Part

There is nothing like being a parent to make you feel like you might amount to something in this life. And nothing like the same condition to make you wonder if you will ever live up to the promise shining in the eyes of your child. 

This is the hard part. Overcoming the limitations of yourself. Overpowering the weaknesses in your character. Learning that love is more important than ego. 

Trying not to be swallowed up by the black hole of worthlessness that lurks in the bottom of an insecure soul. 

This is the hard part. Staring in shock at that human bent on the mirror and realizing how great the task that lies before it, that of being a better person. 

Better, for the sake of love: the imperative of life. 

Book Soul, Book Heart

Field notes, 08 May 2014. Alone, expectant, waiting. For what?

Where resides the heart and soul of a book? Not the story inside it, perhaps, but the thing in itself. I cannot imagine the devoted reader that I am, cozying up to an ebook or tablet. 

There is no life in the machine. 

Digital pages do not rasp under the fingers, nor does the light reflect from them with any warmth. Silicon, glass and aluminum react to the fingertips and the blood running through them. But that blood does not carry logos on its way back to the heart. Ultimately, electronic readers seem not tactile enough to satisfy me.

Wind outside. There is no music or television chatter, so the rustling of leaves I hear through the walls. My mind loses its place. The book is replaced by the voice of Marcus Aurelius, speaking softly in the temple of my head.

"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."

The book I set on the nightstand before it slips from my fingers. The wind stirs the trees again, sounding for all the world like a dead emperor whispering from the yard. I roll over, turn out the light, hoping to dream of that good man to be.