Howdy ya’ll. Working on getting all my business over to this website now.  Hang tight! 

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

I went through a box that my mother passed down to me. You see, I filled it with things from my childhood up to my college years. I had planned on making the box a small start to my Hope Chest .. but well, I’m not quite ready to start stacking quilts and memories into one of those. I am not settled, and this small box is enough – for now – to carry my most precious memories with me.

It’s been awhile since I’ve looked through it by myself. I reflected a great deal on the child-me that I saw depicted in those pictures. Where the hell I found magenta knee-socks when I was 9, I’ll never know. We can only hope the bastard who created them has been sent into ruin. Furthermore, as to why I was only wearing socks instead of shoes outside remains a mystery. I remember the days of my childhood, but I cannot peer into them as anyone but an observer now. It’s impossible for me to fathom the thoughts, feelings and actions of the girl I was back then. I can only replay the events and haphazardly guess the motivations I had. It’s a queer thing to realize you can become an outsider in your own life, that the child-you could likely stick her tongue out at the woman you’ve become. I was a private child, and her reckless smile doesn’t allow me to sink in past her eyes. I was that kid who knew everybody, but no one really knew.

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