... like Atlas after he shrugged

THE BIG IDEA …

Though it is still too big to put to paper, it isn’t too big to be committed to. And it is big enough to brighten my eyes and to make my heart race!

It’s truly big!

WORKING THROUGH STUFF

I don’t know, but it is to be expected that whenever there is a song that wails of love’s heartaches, that there will be those who someone identify with the singer, in spite of the contradictions that are present in their realities. You can’t help but hear it in the wail of some teenager who wonders why her crush doesn’t call her and they can’t see what she sees in the present object of his affection.

Boys do it too. I have said MANY times in this journal that Morrissey sings my life (still!!) and Radiohead break out song, ‘Creep’ is all about loner-stalker alienation. It is how you resolve things that make the difference.

… when it’s NOT a river in Egypt …

I am not really keen on political correctness. I was brought up in a era where disabled was equated with handicapped. I don’t want to get into the self-esteem issue right now, because I am going somewhere else. But better believe I got something for those who wants their ‘self-esteem’ to be respected …

… getting back, since I am handicapped, the person that I am just goes at things and deal with mainly two things -- point A and point B. All that warm and fuzzy stuff, goes out of the window. If I ask someone to take and observation of me, I don’t want to hear all that ‘Ophra-ized’ (but I do watch her show, and have forever ..!) feel good crap talk. I am asking you your opinion because it matters and important decisions are to be made off of what I ask you … so TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK!

See, I can take it … YOU are the one who can’t. I won’t muss your fragile ego, but as for me … look people, have you ever been knocked unconscious in a fight you were winning on NATIONAL TELEVISION? No? Trust me, you calling me out isn’t going to wound me gravely. And even if I hadn’t endured that mortification, then you haven’t been through the military, have you?

Again, if I ask it, tell me. I believe I can take it.

Still, there is a protocol for ignoring what may seem sound and convincing. When you have set a course and the winds want to work against you and the seas begin to roil, and you STILL are supposed to get ‘there’, then into the winds and the approaching storm you sail. You have taken the tack … destiny lies beyond the storm ..!

Sports are full of this ‘into the storm we sail’ kind of accomplishments, or is the most recent Super Bowl already forgotten?

The kind of ‘denial’ I am now speaking of, is the denial that people who have done the things that others thought they can’t, possess. I think I didn’t have enough of it, that I looked up from my pursuit and lost my way. The formula I sought to use is simple enough, but you have to ‘see the tree, be the tree’ to make it work.

For me, I need an avatar.

SQUARE PEGS

I remember Sarah Jessica Parker from THAT show! Jami Gertz too, and that the Waitress sang their theme song (‘I Know What Boy Like’ was their big song!) Can’t call an episode to mind, but I recognized most of the caricatures from my school experiences! That I would find ‘mournful Morrissey’ along with ‘regretful Robert Smith’ of course went hand in hand with that.

I didn’t ‘dress’ to fit a group, I just know that I wasn’t into what everyone else was … in fact, I STILL like Girbaud jeans, and prefer adiddas ‘gear’! I was wedded to the idea that I was never going to fit in, and that was alright … Holden Caufield made it so!

Though I had read Richard Wright’s ‘Black Boy’ in 6th grade, I didn’t find myself ‘feeling’ a literary character until I stumbled upon ‘Catcher In The Rye’. The violence and mindlessness in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ wasn’t me in the least, but in Holden Caufield, like many alienated teenage boys, I found a comrade!

Being young where a month moved like two, it seemed like forever until I entered the service, and I found more ‘literary devices’ to live through. The Russian writer that I liked, Nikolai Golgol wrote several stories, but none that impressed itself upon me like ‘Diary of a Madman’. I STILL feel the confusion of its addled protagonist.

Coming home and my whirlwind courtship to marriage, I found THE literary character, Richard Wright’s Cross Damon, the cursed subject of his novel, ‘The Outsider’ that I found the character that I felt was in my soul and I could identify with. Tortured on all fronts, seizing a dark opportunity to shed one skin to try to put another.

That he had a bitter end … that is semantics! The thing is, the cat had some good ideas just poor execution!

THE UNFORGIVEN

I watched that movie at the top of the year, to remember what made it such a strong point of identification for me. I watched the film, ‘A Few Good Men’ to see if it was there … and other than Jack Nicholson’s speech as Col. Jessup, it wasn’t there. But in William Moody, I found what I was looking for.

Tortured by what he once was, he was fortunate enough to fall into the arms of a life he had disdained. Suffering under its demands gladly, opportunity has been brought to him if he could recapture the venom of his past …

He had trouble drumming it up. The William Moody he was, he had spent years trying to forget. Though he had isolated himself from the life he led, it would find him in a roundabout way, and you would see that even the friendless has a friend …

… after all, shouldn’t we ALL have someone who can bring the shovel and will drive the car to do the burying?

And it was the loss of that friend that brought back the vengeful fury of William Moody … and woe be unto those in the way of its wrath!

LONG, I KNOW …

As I did with Nebraska and my B.F.F, I have to ease worries. One of the reasons that I haven’t committed to words what I am thinking, is that I need to run this by my therapist … measure twice, cut once. I don’t need to be guessing on where this is leading me.

But the thing that I have told my lady friends and anyone who is worried about me, is like William Moody, I AM that bump in the night, that crap guy that has your girlfriend crying her eyes out, dating her cousin … not all that bad, but I think, you get my point.

One of the reasons I have committed to relationships as I have, is that I am trying to win it all … and sometimes you have to RISK it all to try to win. Kipling speaks of ‘building with worn out tools’ in his poem ‘If’ … Been there and done that. I prefer the feeling that I haven’t reached my goal because of my own failing, and not that the goal is flawed. And I don’t want it to be said that I didn’t ‘try’ … to not ‘try’ is a crap soft cop out. I don’t believe in that and people who do, are always among those milquetoast waiting for Godot or some other never gonna happen thing …

So I am going to get this out with my therapist and then see where things go. Feels more right with each passing thought …