Its Friday, and in the interest of mortification, not to mention traditional forms thereof, I have partaken of a Quizno’s “Big Kahuna Tuna” Torpedo. Yeah, I know, I know…shut up.
August 2009
Monthly Archive
August 21, 2009
Between the lines
It's late September, and no, I really shouldn't be back at school like Rod Stewart sang. I thought so until yesterday. Now it is a distinct possibility as a third string back up plan if orders for Virginia or Illinois don't get cut for one reason or another. A former employer wants me to go teach military science at my Alma Mater. Interesting thought. I told them to hold that thought for a few more days and I'd get back with them. I am enjoying my time in Our Nation's Capitol. I haven't been invited into the White House yet, but it isn't because I haven't been jumping up and down on the front lawn yelling for them to let me in, that's for sure. I really think I could do some good there. Don't think it is gonna happen. But I'm not bitter. The fog of uncertainty about the future is lifting and the sting of geographical separation from one's family while living in another state to have enough money to pay for the stuff that has to be paid for is subsiding. Dang but sometimes life, she leaves the welts on ya. More in a few days. If you aren't done reading yet, here's some more. Snippet from latest work in which a conversation between an elderly man and a middle aged friend ensues concerning why he didn't just throw away an old screen door and get a new one at a megastore: We carried the door back from the garage to the front porch and began setting the door nails. "Its a hundred and one things all rolled up into one. Conversations I've had through it, the times I held it open for Patty as we carried sleeping kids up to bed after rocking on the porch, things like that, but mostly the sound of it." "Wood clapping wood" I said. He turned nodding to me. "Precisely. He rubbed his hands together excitedly. "The spring stretching on the chain, and then its oak against oak. How many times does one go in and out of his house a day? Trace that through a married lifetime and you'll have a rough estimate of how many times I've heard that sound. And it has always been the same. Its etched in me. It was the same when I carried Patty over the threshold and took her into our bedroom for the first time. It was the same when the girls would patter barefoot across the floor and fly down the porch and spill into the grass to color or do cartwheels. It was the same the first time you came to visit me and I invited you in." "Sometimes a door is more than just a door" I said, almost whispering.
