April 15, 2003

being there

Every once in a great while things just line up. If i try to think about the infinite subtilelies and variables that somehow added and subtracted to any particular expeirence, let alone the one i had today, i would surely drive myself mad.

It spawned from a reoccuring topic of discussion i have been having with sam. Earlier today i remember hearing myself tell sam that i used to have dreams about being great. Not great in any epic sense, but i just wanted to be great at something. be a master of some facet of being. I told him it is very ironic that i am supposed to be getting a 'masters' degree, but yet i feel like i am heading in any direction but.

"I used to want to be great. but there are too many other things to be."...

Pear blossom petals fell like spring's confetti on Congress ave. as second gear leaned us back in the faded leather seats. The world was divided into bronze and violet. As clementine neared third gear, the rythm between the bronze evening light and voilet shadows punched into it by the awkward off-white houses quickened.

"Wasn't that jody?" perez asked over the crackle of hank williams that trickled out of the rainbow of speaker wires and electrical tape that snaked past the stick shift.

It was. But i let that go. For a while this evening i let a lot go.

"I used to want to be great. but there are too many other things to be."

There are things that i will do. There are even more things that i think i will need to do. But as we accelerated out rt. 50, i was for at least a while, i was comfortable with being where i was in life. Dylan crackled through the wires and competed with the crickets on co. rd. 24. Oak tree buds hung low over the road and the evening light illuminated them like chandeliers. As we rounded the corner past an old ivory farmhouse the sun burned through the cracks in the dirty windshield. I closed my eyes for a moment as clementine bounced over the crumbling shoulder of the road. I saw the sun shine through my eyelids. I smelled the lillac. I listened to perez's story. I felt springtime as we drove right through it's belly.

The other day i told sam that i feel like my life is a sentence. It will end with a period. If i am lucky perhaps an exlamation mark. But either way it will end. The adjectives and adverbs are what make it interesting. I used to want to be great. maybe i want to be a great designer. or a great photographer. but driving through the spring evening i did the rough math on the infinite subtlties and variables that somehow added and subtracted to me sitting there in a muddy 1979 CJ-5 with the top off and an honest friend beside me. We will both go places and do things, and we will laugh and we will cry. but for right then and there there was no future or past. and i was comfortable with those variables.

As i opened my eyes, i saw myslef in third person. I saw the situation. I understood the circumstances. And for a few hours of my life, i was completly happy with what was at hand. i didn't think about the work i wasn't doing. I didn't think about where else i could be. I didn't think about what will happen next. I was happy with the present tense.

Later we picked up genovese on the sidewalk and went to dairy queen.We ate chili dogs and ice cream on the weathered picnic table that sat in the shaggy grass speckled with ketchup packets and cigarette butts. I ran into a girl while getting a cherry dipped cone that i know from somewhere in my history, and invited to genovese's show next week. We stopped by my place and perez and i listened to genovese play some of his new songs on the gutiar in the back room by the kitchen. Savita called me to say hi. I talked to her in the dirty linoloium kitchen while genovese sang a song. My sister was somewhere in athens runnng with prada. I sat back down and listened to the songs. I had mud all over my flip-flops, coney sauce on my shirt, and dripped ice cream on the crotch of my pants. We talked about easy things. The evening was turning blue. Genovese had to do some laundry. Perez had to get ready to bartend.

I used to want to be great. But there are other adjectives in life.

Posted by Todd Roeth at April 15, 2003 08:54 PM