Where Can You Buy A Fortress of Mostly Quiet?

wallpaper - The ISLAND

Almost 9 PM and Dylan is singing about The Mighty Quinn while I try to figure out the answers to hard questions.

You can tie them into If You Could Do Anything What Would You Do? and When Is Failure An Option-2011 Edition. But you could tie them into a bunch of other things beyond that too, things I don’t feel like sharing here because believe it or not sometimes blogging has boundaries.

The music has moved on and Mr. Dylan and I are Knocking On Heaven’s Door, but I am not giving up my guns yet. Take the badge if you want and grab whatever else you need but my guns stay with me.

I might not be the sheriff any more but I am more than a mercenary and a gunslinger doesn’t lay down his sidearm until he is dead and or buried. I most certainly don’t fit either one of those descriptions so I am going to hang on these bad boys for a bit longer.

Forever Young

We like to think time won’t ever catch up with us and that somehow we’ll be the one who figures out what no one else has. Sometimes I still believe it to be true. I know that for now the grim reaper and I have an understanding.

He stays far away so that I don’t defenestrate his bony ass. It is the same reason the devil won’t leave Georgia, I am too fucking mean to deal with or at least they think I am and for now that is enough.

Enough is what I work towards and want, a sense of enough. A feeling of contentment and fullness but I don’t quite have it yet.

That is not necessarily a bad thing, I am still a young man.

I might not be young enough to pretend not to have responsibilities because I have plenty of those which is part of why I am sitting here with this pensive expression.

At least I hope it is pensive, I really am aiming for thoughtful but there is a good chance it is just goofy.

A Fortress Of Mostly Quiet

A Fortress of Mostly Quiet would be good. I don’t need complete solitude, just a place where I can work uninterrupted for a while. There are people who are impeding my progress and my intuition says that I ought to ask them to move out of the way.

If they choose not to move they can be the recipient of my throat punch Tuesday award with the added benefit of being able to collect a boot to the head three times a week.

The hard choices I am working on now are not the sort of things you can ignore nor can you predict the outcome with the sort of certainty I would like. I know what I want to do but I haven’t figured out yet if the choice is a viable option so I am reviewing other things.

Ultimately the uncertainty is wearing a bit on me which is part and parcel of why I am extra grumpy. Thankfully I am not handicapped by having to admit that I am from cleveland because than I might really be screwed. You know those clevelanders are a bunch of screwballs, but we won’t go into that right now.

Move Up A Row

My grandparents are all gone now so I have moved up a row in the family ranks. It is not a bad thing but lately I have very much felt their presence and been frustrated by not being able to speak with them.

I made a point to go into a cigar shop and close my eyes. For a moment I was a little boy again and I could see my grandfathers sitting in front of my parent’s home smoking their cigars.

They stopped smoking them when I was around 13 or 14 so it has been years since one of those moments actually took place, but I reveled in the memory of men who knew I could do anything.

And then the moment was gone and I felt a whisper of disappointment at not being able to have a real conversation. We’re heading on almost two years for one and seven for the other.

Mr. Dylan has moved on to other topics and now so have I.

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8 Comments

  1. Jack May 1, 2013 at 8:10 pm

    Uncertainty is always wearing us. Like a favorite shirt

    I love this line. Stan, that is not just brilliant, it is fucking brilliant. Poetry, beautiful.

  2. Bill Dorman May 1, 2013 at 10:37 am

    You need Superman’s Fortress of Solitude…..

  3. Joe April 30, 2013 at 8:27 pm

    I like my quiet, something I’ve given up for several weeks while my granddaughter visits. It’s worth it.

  4. Stan Faryna April 30, 2013 at 7:20 pm

    I was listening to Dylan’s Beyond Here Lies Nothing when the notification came in. That your new blog post was up.

    An hour ago, I had already turned in. But a young lady wanted me to come look at something and this old man got himself up out of bed. But its nothing to brag about.

    Dylan is finishing up.

    “Beyond here lies nothing. Nothing done and nothing said.”

    Uncertainty is always wearing us. Like a favorite shirt – it seems. Sometimes, I wish it were the other way around. I’d rather wear uncertainty than it wear me. [grin]

    I know of a few fortresses of mostly quiet but they are too far for me to reach.

    The medieval fortress monastery of Moldavita lay in a mountain valley in the North of Romania. The painted church lay inside tall, strong stone walls: kings, angels, and saints enact stories of greatness. Inside the building, the quiet is so loud that you vibrate with it for hours afterward. With purpose. With peace. With just 15 minutes of exposure.

    I imagine a medieval Romanian man bracing himself just the same way. Just before he went to the walls to face the sea of the Turkish army – outside.

    Did you ever take a few minutes on the crumbling ramparts of Masada – looking out on history and the future.

    And it makes no difference that the German tourists are haggling with the Orthodox nuns at the gift shop. Over the price of a painted egg or a small jar of dandelion jam.
    Or – at Masada – a ward against the evil eye.

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