10 minutes about lost love

I loved someone once. 

She made me dinner.

This is not that. And the problem of that relationship was mine, so I folded it into my heart and hoped it would take a heart like shape. I wouldn't know until two years later that only hearts take heart like shape. Pain and disease take the shape of pain and disease, no mater how many times you fold them.

Sitting at this wedding for my. "dinner maker," for the one that got away makes me stronger than I've ever been before. It's the wrong kind of strength, but it will get me through any number of board meetings, networking events and other presentations. 

Thinking this way about lost love, it's the part of me that I think is crazy. Not quite connected to the rest of the world.

I see a future where the VP of sales says, "Brock, where's your plus one? Where's that little filly of yours?" Never mind he call women fillies, as in chattel. But I see myself smiling and saying, "Dreck... I mean Dick. She got away. She needed a better man than me." I see it all in my minds eye because I've already been to the meeting, or meetings like it. I'll get a slap on the back, a quick mentor moment and depending on the venue, I'll get some really good Scotch. 

They will yearn to be single like me, while dreading their own relationship. In being vulnerable they'll come to treat me as one their, the next plum assignment is mine. All it cost me was the molar-griding death of a my relationship.  Pain and disease take the shape of pain and disease, no mater how many times you fold them.

They make a good couple. Maybe they have many dinners and fold only heart shapes, into each others hearts.

Drink any one?

Home

I've got most of the day off today. It's Memorial Day, which seems too big to me. The real meaning of today is too big to fit into words. Yet having one day to honor all who've lost their lives in service to this country, in its many iterations, just one day, seems too small.

Our country which isn't defined by a specific land mass, as much as it's defined by ideas. Which means these people died for some vague and rich ideas, called America.

Soldiers giving their lives for a vague, yet rich idea, we all don't agree upon. Its true there are some words we agree upon when describing America: Freedom, justice, independence. We just don't agree on what those words mean. (A separate blog post altogether)

A single day seems too small. How do you honor the loss of million of lives. What can I say about men and women who gave their lives for an idea? I am humbled.
.

Hotel rumination

I’ve been on the road for too long. I’ve had too much to think about and I've patronized too many false idols: booze, power and bad music.

Booze

My favorite drink is a Sad Martini: vodka, vermouth, and lemon juice. I spent most of the hockey semi-finals with that drink in my hand. Listening to the guys in the booth next to me talk about women and then scream about hockey. I’m straining it all through a booze filter, and they sound the same to me. I hear passion, complaint, loss and regret. The sound from a score on goal is the same as a one-night stand. The wistfulness of the play they will never make is the same in both arenas. And it seems there are only arenas in life. Everything is on display. All is sport.

Power

If it all weren’t sport, it would be life and death, a struggle for power. It’s here I lose my will to go on. When they skirt the real of life I order more to drink. To really tell you what they were saying about power would impart too much information and you will guess who they are. I will sum it up by saying they were all boys wishing to be men. The men they dream-talk of becoming are saviors, architects and heroes. As sadness washes over their group it becomes mine and I see where I’m trapped in becoming.

Bad Music

This moment would've fallen away like a thousand other moments, but as the hockey game dies,  the music picks up. The sound track of becoming holds it all in place. The hollow wail of Chicago blues, and the murmur of  emo are one and the same. I could've drunk this conversation, my eavesdropping could've drown in a few more Sad Martini's, but the music, they lyrics wrap it altogether. 

"One thousand roses at your feet, 

for the five hundred promise I can keep, 

I'm sorry,

I'm sorry baby.."

I kid myself by saying I've just been listening. I don't worship where these broken children play. I’ve been on the road for too long. I’ve had too much to think about and patronized too many false idols. Maybe next time I'll stay in my room.

"May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields and,
Until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand."

I posted this quote to one of my oldest friends Facebook page.

It was a very specific wish, for a very special person.

Reflect on this Irish blessing, I look towards a gray Seattle sky and I can see this blessing become a road map for us all.

The road rises up to meet us, as we face challenges we are gently held and guided. The wind of our community is always at our backs. We have friends and family that are always looking out for us. Our spirit is the sun shine from within, this must be true.

The rain of our efforts is a blessing and the we meet God in everyone person we see (though sometimes it is buried)

Ugly, writing exercise, Natalie Goldberg, failure

Utter failure. She wanted to know what I thought ugliness was, so I told her. "Ugliness is failure." I can still taste the last time I failed, and I mean really failed.  I failed to produce the desired result. It was that simple, but not doing what I was appointed to do, was not a loss. It was the laying face down in my own crapulence, that was the failure. 

I'll talk about the money first. I had 200,000 dollars. The most money I had ever held in my entire life. The number was too big to think about, so I had the banker stack twenty rows of one hundred, one hundred-dollar bills, in front of me. After seeing my money like that I knew, I never wanted to be without money again.

Then I lost it all. Not all at once. First there was Mexico City, then Los Angeles, then Las Vegas, and finally San Francisco. That's all it took, four cities and it was all gone. In Mexico City I was mugged, in Los Angeles I was stabbed, in Las Vegas I gave a bunch away and finally in San Francisco I gripped it too tight, so it slipped through my hands. 

But like I said, that wasn't the failure. 

When the last of it was finally gone, I pulled my home phone off the wall and I sleet on the kitchen floor in a ball. My cell phone had long since stopped working and I couldn't bring myself to get on the Internet and spread my disease, my loss, to my family back home. 

I lost a week curled up on my kitchen floor, slate green linoleum. the color of my loss.