My Little Song For A Saturday Night


            My mind is muddled. That clear view has gotten foggy.
            The important things don’t seem so important anymore. It’s hard to even judge them because of all the other more important things.
            There’s faith and purpose. There are numbers and figures. There’s Joy and Grace. There’s morning and night. Everything else fades into the whirlwind.
            Thirty-six seems like another life. Twenty-seven doesn’t even seem imaginable. Sixteen, however, still somehow seems so close.
            The seasons pass, so they say, but this season hovers like some phantom menace. The same scenarios and the same statements and the same scenes seem to follow my story. I might blink and be an old man but sometimes I blink and find I’m already one.
            Right when I got right in my head my world fell apart. Right when my dreams came true, three more were answered. Right when the howls in my head seemed to follow me at every turn, all I could hear was the little laughter.
            I don’t want personal fans. But I want fans of my work. I feel the failure typing the days away, yet I hold books in my hand I’m very proud of. Someone says success and I nod and laugh because I feel like such a failure all the time. A failure living out his dreams day after day.
            I’m as connected as I ever was, realizing I’ve held many at arm’s length while supposedly wearing my emotions on my sleeve. I’m used to being an actor in a role. A chameleon. Bendable and breakable but somehow never broken. Somehow always broken.
            The dreams I had at sixteen and twenty-seven and thirty-six are just that. Dreams. Today is reality. Today is different. Today pedals faster than ever before and yet I never find a hill to coast down. It’s uphill day after day as if I’m biking up Mount Everest.
            And yet. There are a hundred yets you can imagine. The good ones, the blessed ones, the teachable ones.
            It’s a weird thing, this thing we call age. I’m not sure what to make of it. I’m fighting having to wear glasses. I’m fighting the specks of gray on my sideburns and beard. I’m fighting but I have no reason to put up a fight. But that’s what I’ve done all my life like some breathless soul-sucking rebellious and brilliant little toddler. I’ve wandered just out of curiosity. I’ve wailed just out of whininess. I’ve wrecked just because I could.
            I have twin mirrors looking back at me daily. This season. Yeah.
            This is my little song for a Saturday night in a house full of little sick ones. It feels good getting this out. If I put it on my blog, okay. If you read it, cool. The Shih Tzu sitting beside me snoring seems to care less. The National song playing in my headphones won't care either.
            But there are those who care. Watching from above and watching from below. Reminding me of the dreams that do matter. And so I write through squinting eyes, reminding myself of those things. Whispering them in my ear once again. Just one more time today.
            Tomorrow, I’ll do the same in a different way.  

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