There were two numbers that I always chose for my softball uniform during the many years that I played, 7 and 13.

One represents luck, and the other has been often connected to misfortune.

I believe, unknowingly, I may have set the guidelines for the wax and wane of fortune in my life. I will possess neither in entirety, but by chance fall to one or the other. Too long in one will only lead to the tumble or rise of the other becoming dominant. In twelve steps I have found a pair of lost glasses in a grassy field, and in two steps have walked headfirst into the back-swing of a baseball bat. 

I have learned to manage both gains and losses well, and that attitude has muffled the feeling of exhilaration and tragedy to only a dull buzzing between my ears. For me, I should never have taken my feelings as something to be categorized and treated like a long white box of comics. When the cardboard lid is on, they simply don’t exist, and when opened – the vivid drawings and powerful stories are contained by strips of tape and thin clear sheaths. Effort is required to reveal them to the conscious front of my mind. And even then, when those fragile sheets of ink and color are thumbed through – I rarely smile or express at the sight of them. So, not only do I file my feelings away, I cannot even visibly celebrate or despair at what is contained within.

Occasionally I am able to emote, and the fury of being restrained is palatable. I do not take joy in ordering my life, and I hate organizing. I like messes, I like things being lost – I like my life being sprawled out around me in absolute disarray. To have your memories underfoot, spilling from drawers, bowing outward folding closet doors and obscuring carpet ensures that no matter where the ball of my foot rests – sensation occurs. Remembrance plumes upward, chalky and gritty as ball field dirt does when your body hits the earth just before second base and fills your mouth, nostrils, eyes and ears.

I have to wait about another twenty minutes until I pick up my grandfather and we set about getting my car sniffed and tags renewed.

There’s a girl on a bench near the river that I never listened to enough in the past. I did just enough to make sense of our conversations, and took her advice from afar. Turns out she got her ass up, grabbed my wrist and decided enough was enough. I had always heard her words, but it turns out I had forgotten what it was like sitting at that bench. Now I realize why I never should’ve gotten up in the first place. The view is spectacular.

It’s a very cold morning, but I have a solar paneled heart and Lord is it sunny today.

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.”

— Immanuel Kant