I learned many years ago that truth really is stranger than fiction and that the stupid and ridiculous plot lines of day time television might actually be things that could happen.
That is because people do not always act based upon logic or reason.
Sometimes our hearts go to war with our heads and we do things that make no sense. Sometimes those actions are harmless and sometimes they aren’t.
There are consequences for all that we do but you often don’t know what they will be until you walk through the door.
I show up at the keyboard sometimes because I need engage in a peeling back of the layers to see what I really think or feel.
Blurry Photos & Blurry Futures
I was reviewing some of the notes I took following the telephone call with the doctors office about my liver biopsy when I exhaled in a way I had seen my father do many times.
I wondered if my mom or sisters would have recognized it as being something he would do, snorted and then got up to go hit the gym because I am on a mission.
Walked in and headed towards a treadmill and heard someone call “Mark” and turned around to see who it was.
Can’t tell you why, it is not my name but maybe because I had been thinking about the older Wilner men and thought about the picture above.
I am 20, which means my Uncle Mark and father are about 44 and 45 in it. It is strange to think I am a decade older now than they were there.
Can’t tell you if that was the time I found out my uncle was HIV positive but I know it was that year. I know in those days it was considered a death sentence and wondered what that meant for my uncle.
Don’t think I had the sense to ask my father if he was worried about his little brother and how he felt. It wasn’t because I didn’t think he would be upset, I knew then and know now he would have been.
But it would have been something I should have done and knowing Dad he would have minimized it. At that point he wouldn’t have gone real deep with his feelings about it with me.
I usually smile when I see that picture but sometimes I wonder what conversations we missed out on. That blurry shot reminds me that we can only see so far into the future and then our ability to discern what could be gets blurry.
Music Break
The Chain– Fleetwood Mac
Silver Springs – Fleetwood Mac
Crossroads– Don McLean
Where Is Monty Hall?
Part of what makes life so damn interesting is that you are given the choice to take what is in the box or what lies behind door number one but no one tells you what happens when you choose one or the other.
No one tells you which choice a wise person would make and which would belong to the fool. Sometimes it doesn’t matter because the fool can choose to be the wise person and the wise person can be the fool.
That is the joy of the journey. It is the chance to walk along a road and have experiences that you can’t possibly have without taking that walk.
My kids and I talk about it.
They ask about whether it is fun or scary and I tell them it is both. I say that I don’t want a life that doesn’t have some variety because I want to feel like I am alive and to be stagnant is to die a slow death.
Peel Back The Layers
Somewhere in this blog is a post that talks about the need to feel fear when you write. It talks about the benefits of touching raw emotion and taking a chance. It is spelunking in the darker parts of your mind and exploring the things you aren’t so sure about.
Maybe it is just me. Maybe I am the only one who picks at the scabs to experience the pain that lies beneath.
Maybe I am the only one who uses that to move into a place where I write about the harder things, the darker things, the painful things.
Or maybe not.
The Girls Are Legal Now
I remember lots of pregnant women in 2004. I remember the crazy flight to New Jersey not knowing if Dad would be dead or alive and the trip back to LA doing the same.
Had no idea that I would repeat that particular experience in 2018 flying from DFW back to LA and that the trip back to DFW would be the one where there wouldn’t be any doubt because he was gone.
In my mind’s eye I can hear a woman’s voice say “can you imagine 21 years from now when we can say the girls are legal now” and trying to imagine what life would look like then.
With the Ides of March baby having turned 21 I know my nephew is barely a month away from it followed not long thereafter by my own baby girl.
She called me before she was leaving to come home for Spring Break to ask a question about her car.
Before we hung up I told her I loved her and to drive safely. I thought about how Dad would have been so proud of her and how many times he would have told me about how much better it was to be grandpa than Dad.
“Payback is wonderful.”
I would have smiled because I appreciated seeing how much joy he took in being grandpa.
I thought about a situation nine years ago I asked him for help with and how he looked at me and said it was too bad my grandfather wasn’t still around.
“My father would have had a better answer than I do.”
I remember looking at him and thinking about how things had changed. There weren’t many times he felt stumped and let me know that he did.
There was a moment when I was working on something today where I got irritated because I couldn’t come up with the kind of answer I wanted.
I turned the puzzle around in my head, approached it from multiple angles and tried various tricks but never got beyond hearing that other voice asking
Do You Wish To Dance With Death?
Closed my eyes and went looking for the guy who was saying it and reminded him sometimes you get what you asked for and discover it might be different than what you expected.
He smiled and told me it is just another day and I said I am tired of living in unprecedented times and would be happy to deal with precedented.
We both laughed and I asked if he was prepared for the other changes that are coming and he nodded.
“Mr. Toad has taken the wheel, hold on but try not to worry. You have got this.”
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