Unapologetic.

This is tempered fury.
Passionate rationality; awkward and bold.
Tonight I've disappeared for a moment, taken back by smiles and perfection.
Lost in dreams of righteousness
Weightless.

Tonight I have arrived at a crossroads of perfection and felicity.
Overwhelmed by what I don't understand.
Sent soaring to new heights by possibilities, chances.
Given new life by those forces that keep the world moving.
Hope, and quickened heartbeats.

Tonight I am nowhere, by virtue of being everywhere.
Tonight I am nothing, by virtue of being everything.
Tonight I am something better
By virtue of all the things that keep me grounded
And the virtues that sent me soaring.

I am but a star
Running on fumes
Consuming each and every moment
That falls into my atmosphere
Swallowing life
Ignoring nothing

I will coalesce
Forming something greater
Than the sum of all my parts
I will burn faster and shine brighter
Exploding across the heavens
A shooting star, to be sure

I will shine
Zip and zing throughout the universe
Burn, burn, burn
And, in the end, burst

One day I will explode
With passion enough to stand the world still
To overcome
To outshine
The empty hum
Of street lights and satellites

Could ever I have sung the blues
With the dirt and grime and fear
Had never I known the chill of a dissonant chord?
If never I had known the bold notes of the world?
If never I had known life, and all its power?

Would today have smelled as sweet
Had I never spoken a word?
Had I never shared a thought?
Would life have been as perfect
Had never I known grace?

Would ever I have known sadness
Or recognized disappointment
If never I had tried to number the stars?
Or counted the grains of sand that fill the hour?
Would ever I have hurt
If never I had met anticipation?

What would have come of me
If never I had met peace?
If never I had learned to accept
The imperfect nature
Of chronic perfection.

I'm pretty crass, I can't deny it. Honesty comes in droves with me. If I can be honest with myself, I can be honest with the rest of the world too, I figure. I don't aim to hurt or scold or judge. Just to level the playing field a touch. And just as I'm honest with the world, so do I expect the world to be honest with me.

And I expect to much of the world, I think, to expect the whole of it to understand my point of view; to understand that all I really want in this world is a little bit of honesty. To understand that even if it causes hurt and strife, we'd all be better off if we could see ourselves as others see us. That we'd all be better off if we knew exactly where we stood with each other.

And here's a straight fact: I hate my heart. I hate every little bit of it for the way it makes me feel, for the words it conjures to mind, for its scope and its optimism. I hate it for the way it swings and misses and walks right back to the plate. I hate it for the way it always wants something more. Something better. I hate it for the way it does battle with my head. I hate it for the way it never lets me run away.

All in all, the only thing I know for certain about any of it is that I need to keep moving for right now. I'm a better person today than I was in the past. I'll be a better person tomorrow than I was today, and my continued personal growth is what I'm looking to ensure right now. So for now, I ask you to bare with me, as I sort out the cluster-fuck that has developed between my heart and my mind, and join me as I search for that reason to believe that I'm not only going to find my something better, but that I deserve it as well.

Imagine this moment frozen in time. Imagine the spinning and laughing and the broken notes surrounding this tiny child for as long as life would let it be. Imagine that the next few moments where this tiny child gets lost in dream is just the beginning of her forever. Imagine this moment, this single solitary moment when everything is just perfect, imagine this is the beginning. Imagine this is her foundation for her everything.

And imagine, someday, when this tiny child is dancing through life, she falls into the arms of a man who managed to trap the innocence of his childhood and share it with her. She falls into the arms of a man who knows to kiss the bow for good luck. She falls into the arms of another tiny child some several years removed, and together they find a way to make the world dance.

Imagine.

Now fast forward.

Her smile's slipping. She says she likes a boy.
He has a girlfriend.
There it goes. And here comes the steely silence.
A few minutes later, she says she's angry. A lot.
Probably more than usual.
There's no connection here, I promise.

Take a few steps back, now.

She's wearing a gold dress, and huge smile.
And this is vaguely after the ride over. Not much long after she says she really didn't want to do this tonight. She's just not in the mood.
And there's iced tea on my shirt, and it doesn't match a thing I have on.
For the record, there's 27 marbles on the table.
I only got to 57 stars before she broke my chain of thought.
Oh, and you knew that there'd be dancing.

She says you can leave me, if you want. I don't want you to be bored.
And there's no way I could be bored right now.
There's ten chairs at each table. Only 3 of them are full.

White people can't dance, you know. None of them.
You do it anyway, because you're all bad together.
She says that maybe next time she'll have to get me drunk.
At least, if that's what it takes to get me to dance.

Now fast forward.
It's cold outside, and my car whistles.
Knoxville's so terribly drab this time of year.
And she's telling me stories, and we're commiserating.
But she's so hopeful for me. And she notices things, and she says there's been progress.
But really, you ought to dance.

There's more boy stories. She's not finding the right guy.
Not the right single guy, anyway.
But it's alright, she says. She's probably fearful of commitment, anyway.
And again, she says, she's angry quite a bit.

We finish our meal, and subsequently our date, and at this point I've dribbled on myself twice.
There are 3 cake stains and a grease stain on the front of her dress.
I think she won the clumsy award for the night. It always feels so good when I don't take that prize.
And later, she says she doesn't understand how I had fun.
It doesn't make sense.
You didn't dance much. And, you're right, you're pretty bad.

But she had fun, at least in spurts, surrounded by her friends.
And what she believes about how she'll be when she grows up, well it doesn't match up with how she is today.
Because she's never had the privilege of watching herself have fun.
Because she's never had the privilege of knowing the joy that she gives off.
But watching her when she swears she isn't at her best, you wonder what her best looks like.
And you just know she'll be alright.
At least so long as she has friends.
And how could I not enjoy that?

My whole life I ain' never had too much of anything special. Nothin' I could ever take to my grave. And I'm sayin' praise the Lord that I always had more than I ever needed, but ain' none of it ever filled me up in any sort of special way. Ain' none of it ever found a way to calm my heart or strengthen my will. Ain' none of it ever made me wanna sing. And really, that's what I was lookin' for. I guess what I'm sayin' is that I never found my somethin' special on retail.

My whole life I've had neon buzzin' in my bloodstream. Wide-eyed, full of dreams and hope and optimism and bullshit; always looking for the positive in the bleak and believing in the righteousness of being right. I've spent a lifetime burnin' the candle at both ends, racing in and out of the lives of many trying to connect the dots to something better. But, to be completely honest, I've always run out of gas before I could make the picture make any damn sense.

I've spent my life sayin' prayers. Hopin' and prayin' for better days. For wisdom and strength. Prayin' for the health and safety of my nearest and dearest. I've spent a lifetime lookin' for a little help, and I'd be lying if I said I never found it when I needed it. It's just that maybe I've spent a lifetime lookin' for it in the wrong places. And maybe what I'm sayin' is that I was floatin' them prayers to the wrong place. Maybe what I'm sayin' is that I needed to aim higher.

I've spilled an 'I love you' or two in my time. Family and friends, two or ten women. But I'd never take it back. And I'll tell you this, I ain' never used love in the past tense. If I loved you, then I love you. Repeated past action denotes continuation of the act in the present and future. There is no end to love; my prayers taught me that. There is no changing my something better; life taught me that.

Hope. Copied on this piece of paper was a dictionary entry for the word "hope". "Hope- v.intr. 1.) To have confidence; trust. n. 1) A wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment. adj. hopeful- 1.) Inspiring hope; promising." Scribbled across the bottom in his best hurried script is "There's always hope".

No one else in the family is surprised by this. Especially not his brothers and sisters. "Sometimes hope was all he had. He was always looking for something bigger. So bent on being rich, it got him in trouble a few times. Bad investments and worse luck- sometimes dollars were a little hard to come by. Hope was probably what kept him moving."

Signs of this are littered amongst the ruins of his life. Dresser drawers filled with half dollars and gold coins he thought might be worth something later in life. Brochures for failed investments. Facts and figures on stocks and bonds. Losing lottery tickets and other missed jackpots.

But where there aren't financial documents or bills or statements- where there weren't swings and misses- there were greeting cards. Letters. Photos. Albums and albums of photos. A family history in a sock drawer. Reminders of his successes; freshly minted family heirlooms- the foundation of his existence.

And maybe it was hope that drove this giant of a man. Hope that his children would learn from his mistakes. That his grandchildren might do something bigger than he could have ever imagined. That he would be remembered as a man who loved his family always, and never quit trying to find something better for them.

And maybe he swung too often, and too often he missed- but it was his hope that kept him walking back to the plate. And it was his hope for something better that his family will carry with them forever.

The grass got green awful quick this year. And this old Bradford Pear is shinin' in the sun. Head up, chest out- so proud of itself. Tellin' the world to take notice. Even the plants have a little bit of swagger about them today. And I can't blame them, really. Flaunt it while you've got it; it's bound to be a long year.

We're all sittin' under the same sun today. Nobody's got the good weather market cornered today. There's a peacefulness about the world today- at least from this tiny little Tennessee mountain home. The pulse of the world has slowed a touch today. Introspection en masse. A solar powered revolution. A moment of clarity, followed by sunspots. And I've got this patch of grass I'm savin' for you. Go ahead and come on over. Share this moment with me. Let's watch the world adjust to mother nature.

Pretty soon that sun's gonna drop behind those mountains. It's gonna sink below the water, and leave me in the dark. Left alone, recharged- but longing for more. The moon and stars will fill in where once there was clear blue sky. The hum of satellites and street lamps will replace the call of the Mockingbird. And this day, this moment, will be nothing but a memory.

So for right now I'm going to listen to this sweet Mockingbird. I'm gonna lean against this Bradford Pear, and let its beauty protect me from what I don't know. I'm going to dig my toes in the dirt and absorb the pulse of the world. I'm going to breathe in real deep, and close my eyes, and say a little prayer. A prayer for an encore- a repeat performance at another time, or another place. A reminder that life is dynamic. A reminder that these moments should be savored. A reminder, in due time, that life is beautiful.

These are the letters to imaginary friends.
Brothers in arms in a war against the mundane.
These are calls to action against the tyranny of the cynics.
A revolution in an envelope.
Words to change the world.
But a speech without an audience.

Wrinkled and darkened parchment.
The musk of 50 years in a shoe box, and the stink of apprehension.
Movie scripts. Plot lines.
Main characters.
Love interests, and enemies.
And not a pulse within.

These are the written deeds of a man who never lived.
But the words of a man who was chronically alive.

And she tells me not to bring honesty into this.

You're all french cuff and silk tie, she says. And we both know that it's not about professionalism. Where's the honesty there? You want people to watch, she says. If you want people to watch, if you want them to take notice, you have to take yourself to where they are. They're not in Tennessee, she says. Not the ones that count, anyway.

There's a few million people in New York, I tell her. And you can't name one of them.

The mountains, I tell her, they're not coming with us. The weather wont follow us north, I say. And does anyone really like snow? You know it gets cold in New York this time of year.

And she tells me, point blank, that I can't be afraid of the new because I'm in love with the old. She'll buy me a parka, she says. And by July, I'll be prayin' for snow, she promises. And she'll go alone if she has to. She swears it. You can watch me blow up big, she says. I'll be on the evening news, catching shooting stars. Even if they're just fallen street lights.

Or you can come with me, she says, and we can suck the marrow out of life. We can roam the streets of London, channeling the greatness of former Kings and diplomats. Learn the letter of the law in the halls of Oxford, or spend a summer in Athens and Rome, pretending we know the teachings of Plato, and the accomplishments of Ceasar.

You could come with me, and we could do this right, she says. In a tiny little apartment, from our tiny little corner of the city, we could live the dream. We could wake up one morning the most powerful people in the city, and everyone would know our names. And what we did, who we had become, it would speak for itself.

And at the end of the day we'd change the world by wishing on satellites, exploding across the night sky like stars in distant galaxies. And at the end of the day, we'd turn in, having lived the life like criminals on the lam, experiencing everything we could before the rest of the world caught up. And she leans in real close, like she's about to share a secret.
And she makes a promise to ease my mind. A promise, to help me trust the thought. If the rest of it isn't enough, she says, I'll separate the streetlights from the stars myself.

He was 23. She was 24.
A strong man, a stronger woman. A fact neither would deny.
He was in the Navy when they met, and Grampy always said that distance did funny things to love. But distance, he said, couldn't have defeated his love for her. Not even on its best day.
And he says he has the letters to prove it.
56 years worth, he says, written over the course of two years.
And he laughs, and then he sighs.
And he's happy and then alone, in the span of a memory.

Granny, she saved every letter he ever wrote her. Postmarked in '52, written on stationary paid for by the United States Navy. Sent from the U.S.S. Conway, stationed out of Hong Kong. Written during the communist revolution in China. Letters scratched out in poor handwriting and terrible spelling, and the future English teacher that my Granny was said she still loved him, despite it. The letters, they're full of life. Fifty some odd years worth of age, dust, and situational decay and his message was still loud and clear. His love for her still as apparent today as it was all those years ago. And I guess that's because love is love, regardless of generation.

Granny always made sure that anyone interested in her story understood the magnitude of the history that was made in those years. Change, she said, is historical. And history, she says, is relative to those who view it.
And my, oh my, what a history can be made in 56 years.

And history surrounds my Grampy tonight, as his children and their children sit around him, holding his great grandchildren in their laps, listening to the story of how this family came to be. And he says, we were old enough to know better. That love doesn't happen through mail. And he laughs and says, you know, even in a time when kids were getting married at 16 and 17, they thought we were too young, or that we hadn't known each other long enough. He recalls his mother telling him, point blank, that “forever is an awful long time.” And he lets out a deep sigh, and says “It's probably the only time she was ever wrong.”

And it's funny how love goes. How two people so different could be in love for so long, and survive so much, and not hate each other after 56 years.

Theirs was a love of experience. Of exasperation. Theirs was a love that transcended time and place. That ignored situation and conquered struggle, and refreshed itself with every victory. Theirs was the sort of love that grips you, body and soul, and never lets you go. Their love was the sort of forever that Hollywood wishes it could copyright.

In later years, he was a shop teacher. A history professor. A photographer. A traveler. A painter. And always a student. She was an English teacher. A guidance counselor. A friend. A civic leader. And a teller of the Story she loved so much.

They were lovers, and friends. They were partners in crime, research, and pedagogy. They were parents, and grandparents, and great grandparents. They were aunts and uncles and sons and daughters and everything in between. Cheerleaders and champions, and always the great protector. And when she passed, when he and she were no longer “they” in physical terms, Grampy left her bedside, came out into the hallway to see the faces of the history they had created together. There were tears and sobs from the rest of us, but the man who had loved her so many years simply gave a sad smile, and gave us that boyish wink as he was prone to do.

He said, "I loved her forever. Sickness and health. Good and bad."
He laughs a little and says "I just never thought death would do us part."

For me, these things are love. Emotion. Friendship. For me, these things are hope, and trust. Guarded optimism. I will not apologize for my feelings. I will not apologize for being open. I will not apologize for having too much hope; for trusting too much or for loving so many. And I will not apologize for getting too personal. For being too awkward, or for leaping over barriers.

This is an invitation to join me in my journey to better things.
This is an invitation to help me enjoy who I've become, while I do likewise with you.
This is no longer a private affair. This is openness in the process.
This is joy and lament and everything in between.
And above all, it's absolutely me.

Enjoy.