If you can not be a poet, be the poem

He who angers you conquers you.

There’s a darkness upon me that’s flooded in light
In the fine print they tell me what’s wrong and what’s right
And it comes in black and it comes in white
And I’m frightened by those that don’t see it

When nothing is owed or deserved or expected
And your life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected
If you’re loved by someone, you’re never rejected
Decide what to be and go be it

There was a dream and one day I could see it
Like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it
And there was a kid with a head full of doubt
So I’ll scream til I die and the last of those bad thoughts are finally out

There’s a darkness upon you that’s flooded in light
And in the fine print they tell you what’s wrong and what’s right
And it flies by day and it flies by night
And I’m frightened by those that don’t see it

There was a dream and one day I could see it
Like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it
And there was a kid with a head full of doubt
So I’ll scream til I die and the last of those bad thoughts are finally out

There was a dream and one day I could see it
Like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it
And there was a kid with a head full of doubt
So I’ll scream til I die and the last of those bad thoughts are finally out

There’s a darkness upon me that’s flooded in light
In the fine print they tell me what’s wrong and what’s right
There’s a darkness upon me that’s flooded in light
And I’m frightened by those that don’t see it

Watching from the sidelines...

Just as memories start to lose some color, just as the bad dreams become the exception instead of the norm, just when a few days pass without thinking about the past, life sends me another reminder to bring the past screaming back to the present.

Last Thursday, just like before, I headed out of town early in the morning on the way to an auction. My dad was tagging along because he always enjoyed the auctions. After a hour on the road he closed his eyes as I settled into another three hours of driving, and thinking. I hate these drives but there is no avoiding them. With a cup of coffee in my hand, resting on my leg, I'm cruising at 75 mph. I pass a Cadillac that looks like the one I'm driving and just like the one I drove a few years ago. A few miles later the night goes from clear to puffs of fog. Thick then clear, then thick. Half a mile in I'm slowing down because visibility is getting worse. But, this isn't fog, it's smoke. I see the tail lights of a truck about a mile ahead. As long as I can see that far I'm good. Then another puff of thick smoke. It takes less than a second to pass through it but when I do the truck is right in font of me, stopped in the middle of the highway. "Oh my God!" I can hear myself yelling and I slam on the brakes. I swerve and slide sideways into the emergency lane. We just miss the back of the tanker trailer the truck is pulling. Looking in my mirror I see the other Cadillac coming. I pull into the grass to give him room to squeeze between us. But it doesn't... it never turns or brakes. I have a front row seat as it runs into the back of the trailer, 10 feet from me, at about 60 to 70 mph. It hits it so straight that the car recoils backwards and up 6 to 10 feet in the air and lands on the highway. All is quiet.

I wait a second to make sure the traffic coming up behind us knows we are stopped. Then I run to what is left of the car. Two people inside. Both dead. No noise, no movement. I look around for the truck driver but he is still in his truck. His truck is unharmed. I call 911. I check the car again. No movement, no sound... still no driver of the truck. FUCK! Why isn't he back here yet? I run past the trailer up to the truck. It's been 5 to 10 minutes and he's just getting out of the truck. He stumbles. He mumbles something. He looks like he just woke up or something. He does not go to check on the car that hit him. Instead he gets on his cell phone. "I'm okay, someone ran into the back of me", he casually says. Does he not get it? Your truck is parked in the middle of a major highway. They are dead. Dead.

I walk back to the side of the road and watch as the state patrol casually walk around. The paramedics make a few attempts to check the driver. Then they hang the white sheets over the car. The smoke gets thicker. My 72 year old father walks up to me, as I look at the crushed car, that use to be identical to ours. "That could have been us" he says. I start shaking because I don't know why it isn't us. Later I learn the fire department had to use thermal imaging to find us in the smoke.

As the hours passed everything felt horribly familiar, except this time I was watching from the sidelines. I tried to muster-up some sympathy for the driver of the truck, as I know what lays ahead of him, but I couldn't. I tried not to judge him but I did. From my view point, the second the car hit his trailer he started the process of protecting himself and his company. I know that's part of it but could he not check on the people in the car? How could he not?

Before we were allowed to go I already noticed inconstancies in his story. I had already talked to his company's lawyer on his cell phone. People were covering their asses and the bodies were still warm, still wedged in the car. I gave the police my statement. Keeping only to the facts and leaving my opinions out of it. That's fair, right? Right? But what about the dead people? I know things. I saw things that don't add up. The law suits will start to fly soon. I'm all to familiar with that part of it too.

So the story will go. A man, and his father, got up early March 17, 2011 to travel out of town. At 5:30 am they ran into smoke covering the road. Because of this smoke, a truck had stopped in the middle of the road. They never saw the truck and slammed their Cadillac into the back of the trailer. They were killed on impact.

What won't be told is the phone call to their loved ones that will forever change their lives. What won't be mentioned is the what the driver of the truck will go through to come to terms with his role in what happened. What may never come to light is what really happened that morning. What will never be known is why it wasn't me.

The local news report

Yep

All human beings have three lives: public, private and secret

~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez ~

Letting go...

I've come to the conclusion that it is time for me to let go of my romantic notions regarding relationships. It's time to admit that placing others' happiness ahead of your own, hoping that they are doing the same, is more of a one way street than a the path to Utopia. Time to realize that terms like "nice guys finish last" and "a sucker is born every minute" are created from a sad but very real truth.

From this conclusion comes the logical solution that I need to put myself at the top of my own list. Yes folks, it's time to be a selfish S.O.B. While I have been selfish many times in my life, I have always treated it like a sin. There have been times when I was willing to commit this sin but guilt and restitution almost always followed the deed. Now I must learn how to separate guilty emotions for the simple act of looking after my own wellbeing.

Now this doesn't mean that I won't be there to support the people in my life. It just means my support will be limited to the effort I feel I can give without putting myself out. "No" must become a bigger part of my vocabulary. Taking others' feelings into account will only happen after I have considered my own. I will be more forthcoming with how I feel. Not with the expectation that my feelings will change a situation but to assure myself that others know exactly where I stand and where I'm going.

I will continue to do nice things for those in my life but only for the sole, selfish reason that it makes me feel good. I will expect nothing in return other than the joy of giving. In turn I will not owe those who choose to do for me unless I deem their efforts worthy of repayment.

From now on my problems will belong to me. Others' problems will be accepted only if I have the time, energy and the will to get involved. If your problem conflicts with my plans, well, I wish you the best. I will consider others' feelings when making decisions but will give them no more weight, maybe even less, than my own. I will make room for others in my life but I won't do it at the expense of my own space. If I fail, it will be my own fault. If I succeed I will claim the victory. Others may celebrate it with me but not claim part of my accomplishment. I am going to do all I can to be the man I want to be, not the person others expect me to be.

Of course, I exclude my children from the above mentioned solution, but not really. Placing them at the top of my list has always been one of the few selfish acts I never felt guilty about. As for everybody else? Well that's not really my problem anymore is it?

Rolling in the dough

After seeing Jen's post about baking Challah bread I was so inspired I decided to give it a try. Even though I got flour everywhere, I have to say, I was proud of my first attempt at baking. I'll pause until the cheering subsides.... Thanks to Jen's excellent direction and informative videos I knew exactly what to do, even if I didn't always manage to do it.

Thanks Jen for all the help and for the delicious bread.

Hello?

I recently switched from my old trusted Black Berry to a Droid Global 2 cell phone. The phone is slick but a bit intimidating so I decided to start with something simple. Entering an email address is about as easy as it gets so I entered my Yahoo email account that happens to also be my Facebook email account. To my surprise the phone imported ALL of my Facebook contacts into my phone. WTF??? Most didn't have phone numbers but some did, like Daughter. Now understand, I play a few of the games on Facebook and I don't know all the people on my Facebook account.

Try as I might I could not remove the list from my contacts. They had become fused to my phone. I didn't realize how big a problem it would be until I tried to call The Wife on the way home from work. At a red light I pulled up the contact list and scrolled through it for her name. When the light turned green I looked up and started to go. When I felt safe, I looked back down at the phone. To my shock it had already called someone. I yelled, "FUCK!" Then I noticed the phone was still connected. I quickly hit the "End Call" button and a picture of a woman, a childhood friend, displayed on my screen. It said the call had lasted 30 seconds. Long enough for me to have reached a girl I haven't seen or talked to in 30 years and shout, "FUCK" into her voice mail, if it was on.

So if any of you get a strange call from me in the future you now know why. Fuck!

Tools to Happiness

It has been said on this blog many times that you are responsible for your own happiness. An idea I have tried to embrace but have always felt wasn't practical in real life. Yes, we get to pick our paths. Yes, we have free will to change that path when it ceases to bear fruit on our happiness tree. The problem I'm having with taking charge of my own happiness are silly words that get in the way, like commitment, responsibility and reality.

If I lived in a perpetual state of selfishness I could easily move from moment to moment depending on what fancy hit me to make me smile. Even then, the deep happiness that comes from accomplishment, which is often achieved from sacrifice and determination, may become more elusive.

So I've come to the conclusion that to have a relationship, with anyone at almost any level, is to place your happiness in differing degrees in the hands of others. This of course brings me to another word that has given me such a fit when it comes to happiness, expectations. While I agree counting on others to live up to our expectations is a foolish plan for happiness, I also want to point out it is human nature to do so. Like someone once sang, "everyone plays the fool, sometimes." I mean laying our happiness on how our kids turn out is something that can't be avoided unless your heart is made of stone or you just never have them. And for them, and others in our life, we may do a life time of work and make sacrifices that not only make us unhappy but crush a little part of who we are. Not because we want to be rich but because we think providing the right path for the people in our lives, as well as ourself, will lead to heaping bowl of happiness with mash mellow surprises and rainbow slides. We really do believe this. We must, right?

Of course when Reality bumps up to the poker table of life we quickly realize we are not holding all the cards. We make a deal with the people in our life. They agree to this deal in one way or another. Then we all set out to, in the words of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "make it so." Then when they fail to "make it so" or they decide "making it so" isn't as important to them as they first let on, or worse, they change to a plan that wasn't the plan at all, how can we help but be unhappy? True, it was our expectation that they would work just as hard at the plan as we did but that's hardly avoidable seeing how an agreement was struck, verbal or not.

How do we own our own happiness in a world where the rules change daily and one person's commitment is another's thought of the day, or hour? How do we plow a good row for our future seeds when others so carelessly shove dirt into the path we just gave blood, sweat and tears to dig? How can we still be in charge of our happiness when we feel obligated to the commitments, made in part by others, who now feel no obligation at all? Sure, I can carry the load, most of the time, but I won't be happy about it and I am damn sure going to resent those who packed on the extra weight and are waiting at the finish line for me to deliver it.

Our choices seem to be to never count on anybody, never expect people to do what they agree to and never do anything for anybody and expect anything in return. How sad. Obviously not realistic either.

So what's the answer, please? Is it learning when to play the fool and when to stand up for yourself? That line is so fine I haven't found a pair of glasses that allows me to see it. Can I really find happiness knowing I'm playing the fool? Well, maybe when I let my child beat me at a game to see the excitement on his face but not on the the big things like commitment, responsibility and trust. How do I learn to let those go when the ramifications of doing so slap me in the face at every turn. If ignorance is bliss then foolishness, knowing what's right and picking something else, has to be destruction. Can we really be happy watching parts of our world be destroyed by the very people we live for? Hardly.

The answer must lay in developing a tool to be able to let things go, even if these things go against what you believe are right, fair or just. This tool must be forged from other tools like, forgiveness, compassion, understanding and priorities. This is a tool I have yet to acquire or construct in my life but desperately need to obtain, apparently, to be happy.