In the trenches of livin'

 

This one is another all-over-the-place mishmash. I can't vouch for its readability.

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I got in a fight Friday night. It was a zero-punch fight. I won.

There's a new restaurant/lounge in town, which is nice for the town on several levels. However, as I walked home (beautiful October evening!) from an engagement with a couple of former sailors there were four intoxicated young fellows engaged in shit slinging and dick beating. When you've had your ass kicked as many times as I have, you begin to recognize patterns, and this pattern revealed a high probability of stupid. As I passed them on the sidewalk one of the fellows got shoved into me. As we made contact he started to mouth off. I didn't like his tone. For those who've been there and are prepared to act decisively to quickly de-escalate and minimize injury, these things happen very quickly. Time slows down and and decision trees spin out. He didn't complete a single syllable before shit went down.

I simply leaned back and let his inertia carry him on by. Hmmm. Inertia. My instinct was to shove him hard. I had an inkling that he would go down if I applied the proper Delta V (thanks blooger for fucking up your symbol fonts!). A complication was the vehicular street traffic in front of him. I didn't want him squashed, just acquainted with the reality of fucking up. Fortunately, there was a light pole between him and the street and his vector was just right. His face made a satisfying melon-splatting sound when it hit the pole. He rebounded and collapsed with a spectacular bloody nose.

I only barely slowed as I stepped over him. I casually looked at his fellow warriors, now gone totally silent, and saw six eyes big as onions. No factor. No need to say a word.

It felt good and it felt right, which probably means it was bad and wrong.

But I could be wrong about that.

It didn't feel like I acted out of anger, but there was a great deal of satisfaction in the way I performed.

Saturday morning there was dried blood at the scene but not very much.

As Richard Pryor put it, "Old men don't fuck around when they be fightin'."

Good thing, bad, thing, or just a thing? Probably all three. IIWII.

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Thursday I did a bit more than 13 exercise miles. A good bit of that was simple hiking, but a couple of miles was hard hill running, the best of High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT. Good cardio-pulmonary workout. It's good core work and especially leg work. My thighs and calves are hard as chinese 'rithmatic (Richard Pryor strikes again!).

Friday I did seven-and-a-half miles of hiking. Not hard but steady. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. Often of late it's been a struggle to overcome inertia and get moving. Friday was that kind of day.

It sucked and that's a fact. The hurtin' was on me, yeah, and the great inertia monster and all of his heavy friends were draped around my shoulders. It's hard for me to adequately describe what that place looks and feels like. It's a place where moving and doing and livin' appear to be impossible.

I've learned a few things over the years, though. Impossible, ain't. To my great good fortune and everlasting gratitude navy training taught me that I could do more than I ever thought I could, and that the idea of impossible is just another way of quitting, giving up, surrendering.

Of course I'm a weak and flawed ape-lizard. We all are. Sometimes I fall short. Sometimes I quit, give up, surrender. In those times I can either fall back into the slow death of mere existence, or I can ask God to do for me what I cannot do for myself. And He does. Every time.

In those realms the task is never easy. It's always hard. But it's never too hard. God supercharges my purpose, effort, drive, determination, perseverance. God molds those things in a way I could never do of my own accord, and He steers my feet out of the mire of self and back upon the proper path, the path of love and service.

Is mashing a drunk's face against a light pole an act of loving service? It could be, couldn't it? Was it in my case?

• A: Yes, of course. It's a very spiritual and giving thing to do.
• B: No fucking Way
• C: It's a spiritual experience, but not a spiritual action.
• D: All of the above.

If you guessed B, you would be correct.

I am a serious piece of work.

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Friday morning.

I sit in my recliner watching the dawn come through the big north facing picture window in my living room. Outside the pall of wildfire smoke hangs in the cool, still, October air. It's going to be another beautiful Indian Summer day.

I'm not feeling it. My spirits are very low and I'm hurting very much. The weight of inertia is nearly suffocating.

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen."

What can I change? I can get off my ass and log some miles.

I tried to enjoy the sight of Old Glory in the sun. I kinda felt better.

It was smoky.

My path took me past a property where odds and ends of old equipment are stored.

After a good few miles and a nicely worked up sweat, I took a peek at the new underpass. I used to be able to run steps there. Not no more! Some serious whining in this video!

Thence to the sole still-pumping oil well inside the city limits. Or town proper. Whatever.

Back home I did feel better. I got busy and washed laundry and hung it out to dry. The balance of the day was meh.

Until I won not much of a fight. That was awesome.

After the big win, Modern English came up on my u2b feed. I remember watching Melt With You on MTV back in what, '82 or '83? I've always liked the song. The video was a little freaky but it won a lot of awards.

Today the song speaks to me in ways it couldn't have back then. And I like the quarantine version of 2020 much better than the original.

I can wrap those lyrics around much of my recent and ongoing experience. The concept "melt with you" resonates strongly. My mind spins down a particular path. Self-pity, I see, will make me unworthy of her love. Self-pity is selfish, the love she gives me is selfless. If I am to be worthy, I must work harder.

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Saturday morning I woke from sweet dreams. The dreams were dreamlike, yet also very real. There was serious communication. I can't recall the words, but the experience was alive with love and okayness. And touch. She made a point to embrace, to touch my face, to stroke my arms. The touch was real, palpable, tactile. I felt it. What a blessing.

What are the dreams in reality? Are they just random synapses firing? Or does she really come to me each night? I cannot know, not in this realm. Yet I do know.

On Saturday working out was easy. I was fresh, my head was clear, I felt comfortably strong and fit. There was no inertia to overcome, or none of the emotional inertia anyway. I still had to drag my carcass around, but that's just physics. I ran lots of flights of steps. More than 50 in fact.

Well, one more than 50!

Then it was back to laundry, and while clothes washed and dried the writing and posting of a corpsman chronicle. It was rather a dark effort in many ways. I tried to get the feel of the thing across but I'm not sure I was successful.

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She came to me again in the night. It seems we're very well melted together.

It also seems as if I'm in a very interesting and challenging situation. I seem to be existing in two realms. They are very different places, connected by a white gold thread of love. The future, it seems, is open wide. I would never have imagined this experience could play out this way.

Batshit crazy? Probably. But this brand of batshit crazy feels okay.

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Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.