Saturday, May 24, 2008

The notebook

I have eight or ten notebooks I have written in over the last few years. We have moved many times, so they vanish and reappear as boxes stand in varying states of emptiness, or fullness if you're more optimistically inclined. While they are missing I replace them, and then find the old ones and end up writing in several of them at once; until today I had not filled one up. I have filled them with nonsense, but never completely; I have completely failed to express what I had hoped to express, but not on every page; I have covered every page I wrote on with my ramblings, but never on all the pages...until today. It amazes me how long I can take to say nothing, but with all that puffed up.....okay I'll stop. Just trying to recognize a milestone...a milestone of touchstones with which I have measured the quality of my life, or more accurately the quality of what has made up my life.


I'm reminded of a funny story; an old friend of mine contacted me a couple years ago. He is a senior manager for a major food company now, and when he called me he was surprised to hear that I wasn't famous or something.
"Nope, me just mechanic." I spit out between mouthfuls of turkey taken right off the drumstick I walk around with. We didn't talk again. I emailed him a few times as I came across his name in a magazine or in an article on the net...I think he screens his email and blocked me as spam. Oh well, he used to try to charge me a quarter to play the pinball machine at his house...real friends don't do that. Take your money and fame, I've got touchstones, and turkey legs.


The playoffs beckon...I've actually gotten into the NBA again. It has been ten years or so since I watched any games. The biggest change I've seen is the tattoos. One guy had a small paragraph on his shoulder; it had some conflicting tenses and mixed metaphors but I'm no grammatical genius, so... live and let live. Another guy had a maze tattoo I think; the camera didn't stay on him long enough for me to get through it so I'm not sure. Game 3 is starting, gotta go.

Auf wiedersehen

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