THE SKY

"There are people who are always in love with the sky, no matter the weather. One day you will find someone who’ll love you the same way."
n. m., from a book in progress (via wnq-writers)

HOW MANY DID YOU KILL

"I met a man today who fought with the Americans in Italy in WW2.

He'd traveled with his dad to Europe several years before the war. When in Germany, he'd asked his dad, "Why are there so many soldiers? Why are there so many airplanes? What's going on here?" 

His dad told him that there would soon be a terrible war.

When this boy was 16, he enlisted and wound up in Italy with the American Army. He said that he decided to kill as many Germans as he could. This is what he told everybody.

He said when he caught his first German POW, both he and the German boy burst into tears.

Now, when his grandkids ask him how many Germans he killed in the war, he says, "None, I hope."

From "Regaining Your Soul" at QUIDNUNC 

THE BITTER HEART

Sometimes I think I have too big an appetite to be involved in this kind of relationship for this long.

They say if you get hungry enough you will eat your own heart.

Its bitter, very bitter, and almost thankfully,  there isn’t much left.

And I go on because there seems to always be a little more from where the last bite came from.

"In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, ‘Is it good, friend?’
It is bitter — bitter,’ he answered,
But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

Stephen Crane

THE SIMPLEST TRUTH

“...about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere growth of this one. He cannot sleep in his own skin; he cannot trust his own instincts. He is at once a creator moving miraculous hands and fingers and a kind of cripple. He is wrapped in artificial bandages called clothes; he is propped on artificial crutches called furniture. His mind has the same doubtful liberties and the same wild limitations. Alone among the animals, he is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter; as if he had caught sight of some secret in the very shape of the universe hidden from the universe itself. Alone among the animals he feels the need of averting his thought from the root realities of his own bodily being; of hiding them as in the presence of some higher possibility which creates the mystery of shame.“
GK Chesterton

Credit~Live and Learn and Alive on All Channels

HOT WHEELS

Mike was my first friend in the sixth grade when I moved down here from Detroit.
I remember standing with him outside Shady Oaks Elementary, talking to this girl named Marsha. I don’t know what Mike said to her, but she took of running.
Well, my natural instinct was to take off and run after her, which I did.
Since she was in a miniskirt, she couldn’t run very fast, so it didn’t take long for me to catch up with her.
Once I caught up with her, my natural instincts took over again and for lack of knowing what else to do, I tackled her.
We both got up, looked at each other, and she started to running again.
Well, I guess my natural instincts weren’t as strong now that I'd tackled her once, and I could hear Mike hollerin’ at me, so I let her go.
When I got back to Mike, he was cracking up.
“Whats so funny?” I asked.
“You tackled her!” Mike says.
“Sure I did” I said.
“Well, don’t tackle girls. Especially, don’t tackle girls in dresses” Mike says, still laughing his ass off.
“Why not ?” I asked.
“Hahahaha! Do you really have to ask?” Mike says.
I thought about it a second. Then it dawned on me.
“Oh, yeah!” I said, and we went to Mike’s house to play Hot Wheels.

WHY I DONT DATE

Bought ticket for an event at the bequest of one girl.
She chickened out.
I asked two others.
They were otherwise engaged.
I asked another (#1) who said “Have you asked my friend (#2) if she and her son would like to go?”.
Apparently, she would like a chaperone, yes?
So I contacted #2; she seemed to be open to the idea.
So quickly, I bought two more tickets, only to have #1 say “I hate to be a fuddy-duudy, but, a rain check?”
So I ask #2 if she is still in. I'm wondering did #1 just shuttle me over to #1? Like maybe I asked the wrong one to start with?
#2 says “I told #1 it’s a bad time for me”
Well, guess what sister?
It’s a bad time for me too.
Now I got 4 tickets and I’m down to calling old lovers from 15 years ago, and two girls with boyfriends and saying:
“I need a date. Pays 20 bucks.”

TILL MY TROPHIES AT LAST I LAY DOWN

I see where people are complaining about a general feeling of entitlement running through the country, and blaming it on the particiption trophies that kids generally get when they go out for Baseball, Soccer, Pee-Wee football, ect.

Yeah, like participation trophies are suddenly ruining the country. I still have mine from 1970, where I shot a 121 in the Church Youth Golf Tournament. It really has very little to do with any of my current list of character defects.
See, thats the thing. I didnt tell the whole story. The next year I didnt get a participation trophy. I won the tournament. Shaved 36 strokes off my 121 and shot an 85. Sure I'd gotten better but mostly... I CHEATED MY ASS OFF.
Thats whats wrong with the country.
True story. The guy I beat shot an 87. He cheated his ass off too.

Just not enough.

So it ends up the Medalist trophy is worth exactly what we put into it.
Nothing.

So I kept the participation trophy, and gave the worthless Medalist trophy to the guy that shot an 87 a few years ago, and we had a good laugh, confessing our sins. He cheated too, but he went on and got a golf scholarship. He was good, a natural. In fact I'd taken him golfing the first time out in the 8th grade and he hit a hole in one on the 11th hole.
That first place trophy isn't worth a shit, but the story is priceless.

IF BY YES

“I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

― James Joyce, Ulysses

MY BIRTHDAY PARTY

I had a huge party planned for my 21^st birthday. Living in the Brown Trail apartments with Kem Keeton, I expected about 100 people. Never mind the logistics of getting 100 people into a two bedroom apartment.

At 7:00, there were probably 30 people there. The kitchen, dining room and living room were packed, and now the stairway was filling up.

Herschel and John came to me. We needed to make a beer run they said.

“I don’t want to go on a beer run!” I said. “I got chicks coming to this party, I plan to be here when they arrive.”

I’m not sure what my plan was for all these “chicks”, I just knew I didn’t want to miss anything.

But they were persistent, and talked me into going on their stupid “beer run”.

The beer run took us all the way to Majestic Liquors, way over on Randall Mill and 820. We bought the beer, got back in the car. I was eager to get back home, all those “chicks”, ya know?

But once underway, all of a sudden John wants to go to his house for a “Pot Run”. His house is way over in Richland Hills.

I’m livid.

“We got enough pot back home to invade Amsterdam. Take me home. I got “Chicks” coming over” I said.

It didn’t matter. My best friends were being un-cooperative, and 30 minutes later, with no “chicks” anywhere around that I could see, we were in front of Johns house. It was starting to get dark. I’d been away from MY PARTY for an hour and a half, and I had visions of all the “chicks” there were being scooped up by all my horn-dog  friends.

On my Birthday!

The nerve of those guys.

We were in front of Johns house, but no way was I getting out of the car.

“You just run in John, get yer shit, and run back out and get me back to my party!”

“No, you have to come in” John says. “I have a present for you.”

“No way’ I said “bring the present out with you. I’m not getting sucked into some black hole that is your house. I got chicks waiting for me.”

Well, the next thing I know, they have physically removed me from the car.

Now I’m stamping my feet in Johns front yard, having a tantrum, and all I can think to say, over and over  is “Take me home. I got chicks.”

Finally, Herschel grabs me by the shoulders, says “Look down the street. See all these cars? Where do you think all these cars came from.”

I look down the street. As far as I can see, there are cars parked, asshole to elbow, looking both ways.

It is a bit unusual.
“That’s weird. What ARE all these cars doing here?” I said.

Herschel shakes his head. “Happy Birthday asshole. If you will just come inside, we moved your party to Johns house. There was no room at your apartment. There are all sorts of chicks in there, waiting just for you. So do you want to come inside, or do you want us to take you back home now?”

I wish my friends Cyndy and Kathy were here to read this post.

They both passed the last two years, and Cynthia was always delighted whenever I would thank Kathy for the wonderful present she gave me for my 21st Birthday.

NOT HEROIC DEFEATS

"Roshi [his Zen Buddhist teacher] said something nice to me one time. He said that the older you get, the lonelier you become, and the deeper the love you need. Which means that this hero that you’re trying to maintain as the central figure in the drama of your life— this hero is not enjoying the life of a hero. You’re exerting a tremendous maintenance to keep this heroic stance available to you, and the hero is suffering defeat after defeat. And they’re not heroic defeats; they’re ignoble defeats. Finally, one day you say, ‘Let him die— I can’t invest any more in this heroic position.’ From there, you just live your life as if it’s real— as if you have to make decisions even though you have absolutely no guarantee of any of the consequences of your decisions"
Leonard Cohen

I often run across the first two sentences in this quote, and its good. But I think you have to have the rest of the quote, Leonards explanation, to really get what its about.

FOR PEREGRINE

The best collection of hilarious comics is over at This Isnt Happiness.
I've filtered them out for you, just follow the link below, and enjoy!
http://thisisnthappiness.com/tagged/comix

YOUR OWN ADVICE IS HARDEST TO TAKE

"To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment "already"? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me. And always the object of love was enveloped in erotic fantasy or was submitted, as in Stendhal, to a "crystallization," so it is frightful to think of that object as it was, naked among the naked things, and of the fairy tales about it one invents. Yes, I was often in love with something or someone. Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love. That is something different."

Czesław Miłosz

A few years ago there was a girl, Ellie, that wanted to show me what for. She flirted, I flirted back. As girls often do, she confided in me. Said she was seeing a married man. I talked with her, without revealing to her that I was seeing a married woman. That I had been for 3 years. I listened, and let her talk.  It was easy to empathize, though her case was different from mine.
Among other things, he had told her he was moving out from his wife, getting an apartment the next day. But it didn't happen. My girl had never told me anything like that. He had strung her along with those kind of stories for quite some time. And she was distraught over it.

A week or so later, at a party at my friend Angela's on a New Years Eve, I spied a ceramic bird on a shelf. I asked Angela where she had gotten the bird.

“Oh, Ellie gave me that!”
Ellie said “Do you like it? I got it Target”.

I said yes, I liked it very much, but didn’t say that I wanted to get one for my girl (she loves ceramic birds) because, well, my girl is a well kept secret.
For almost five years, a very well kept secret.

A month went by, and one day Ellie called. She wanted to come to my apartment. She had something for me. She was pretty insistent, and I gave her directions. She came in and gave me a package with the ceramic bird in it. Then proceeded to try to seduce me.
I’m not one to turn down  pussy, at least I never had been before. But I explained to her that my heart belonged to another, and I wasn’t at liberty to say who, because my situation was so similar to hers.

She seemed to understand.

And here is the thing.

About two weeks or two days later she met someone, and they had an instant connection, and she forgot all about her married guy, forgot all about me, and within a  few months she was married to the new one, and they make the coolest couple. Just meant for each other.

Before I posted this I went through some old Facebook messages I had traded with her two years ago. I sent her this, a few hours after I had refused her advances. Man, it so relevant to what I've been doing for five years now.
But your own advice is the hardest to take. 

“There's something better for you out there, something cleaner, more crystalline, and pure. Some people like to say not to settle, but sometimes we settle. Sometimes a little love on whatever terms is what we need. But there is a time to move too. A time not to settle anymore.”

Addendum: I know why I cant take my own advice.
I still believe, baby. I'm still a believer.

Addendum #2; It took another two months from the posting, but I took my own advice.

THE TOOLS

You think your heart’s your own,
to lay down like a red chip, 
to share or not share. 
But it isn’t your own, 
it will never be your own. 
It belongs to whoever can win it, 
to whoever can keep it. 
It belongs to whoever has the tools 
to break inside your chest and 
take the red right out of you. 

Peregrine @   Your Eyes Blaze Out

THE WHO?

"But in the end you become a hostage to who you are, to what you want, what fascinates you, what breaks you down, what holds you under; the sense you feel compelled to build, the truth you try so helplessly to construct, the who you ultimately and helplessly are."
 - Brad Zellar

SMUGGLING BUBBLE GUM

I cooked some ribs on my smoker this weekend. Two women walking dogs came by. Both with big breasts, nipples poking through the terry cloth tops. Like they were smuggling bubble gum. They talked with me for a long time, and I gave them some ribs, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't stop looking at those tits.
Do you think they noticed I was gawking?
They are probably used to it.
What do you think was the cause of this effect?
Me?
Or the BBQ?
I don't know. 

I'd post this to FB but I'm afraid they might be trolling me by now.
Shoot, they're probably lesbians anyway.
So whats the difference?