Archives for March 2010

I was almost 25 when I left the city of my birth. It was time to go, time to move on and get away. There were new experiences to be had and the pain of what I had once been, what I had once had was too much. Everywhere I looked there were signs of the glory and the fall.

For most of my life I had been a scrapper, never afraid to fight, never willing to give up and not smart enough to get out. It was a self imposed punishment for sins that I had committed but was unwilling to discuss.

It is not much of a description, not very colorful at all. In fact it is rather ordinary, but that is ok, I am ordinary and I prefer it that way. If you stuck me in a crowd full of people you would be hard pressed to pick me out. It was like that in school, never did or said much in class. No need to draw attention to myself I did what I needed to do to get through and nothing more.

And for the longest time that had been enough, an average, nondescript existence. It suited me fine to be a guy who punched a time clock. But sometimes even the average man find himself in a situation that is beyond his control,a time in which he becomes something more than he has been.

But the question is not what he does to elevate himself but how he handles the elevation.

It was Friday night and I had just finished my shift at the plant. There was no rush to get home because there was no one to get home to, no wife, no family, no girlfriend, not even a dog. Just an empty house that was sparsely furnished.

Friday nights were not much different than any other night of the week. I’d go home, pop open a can of beer and stare blankly at the television screen content to let my brain turn to mush.

On this particular night I decided to stop at an ATM. I wanted to order a pizza and I had nothing but the spare change from the last time I had visited the liquor store. It wasn’t enough to buy a pack of gum, so I was forced to go to the bank.

There were two people ahead of me in line, a man and a woman and behind me there were a couple of teenage boys.

I didn’t see him approach. I didn’t notice anything about him including his presence until he was standing in front of us, waving a gun and shouting for our wallets. I have a bad habit of giggling when I am nervous. I don’t like being the center of attention and now was certainly a bad time to laugh, but laugh I did.

5’8 or so and about a buck twenty sopping wet with a bad haircut and a Judas Priest shirt, that is all he was, oh and he had a big gun and an even bigger attitude. He grabbed my collar and asked me what was so funny. Before I could answer he had grabbed the woman in front of me.

She cried as he pulled her in front of him and asked me if I thought that this was funny. I choked back a snigger and told him that it wasn’t. He told me that if I so much as smiled he would kill her. I wiped the smile off of my face.

It was the wrong thing to do, but I didn’t know it. The jackass cuffed me in the side of the head and laughed. It infuriated me, brought back memories of years of being teased and tortured by my someone who had been like an older brother to me. So I just reacted. I kicked him in the balls and smacked him in the head.

In the movies the gun falls and the hero (there has to be a hero) grabs it. Not here, not in my world. In my world when I slap him there is a flash of light and a loud noise. I am splashed with something, but it feels like hours before I realize that he just shot the woman, and that he did it involuntarily. The wetness I feel on my face is her blood.

I stand there in shock, numb and not really aware anymore of what is happening. The guy she had been with is beating the crap out of the jackass, the Judas Priest shirt is stained now, but it is with his blood.

There is a cop speaking to me, but I don’t answer. The real hero is lying, telling the officer that I saved everyone’s life, that if I hadn’t hit him the guy would have killed us all.

I didn’t hit him, I hit Georgie. It was Georgie I saw in front of me. It was Georgie taunting me, I just snapped and reacted. But I guess that somewhere inside I began to hear and to believe that I had been the hero, that when the bell rang I had come out swinging.

And that was really the beginning of the end.

(This is part of this story here. I am working on it, again.)

“It’s a bitter pill I swallow here
To be rent from one so dear.
We fought for justice and not for gain
But the magistrate sent me away.”
Van Diemen’s Land- U2

You’re name is Johnny and you are back in the familiar setting of running with the moon. It is more than a phrase or an expression that you sometimes use, it is an occasional reality. For running with the moon is what you sometimes do when you cannot make sense of that which you face in your daily life.

You run under a moonlit sky and pretend that you are a wolf running through the forest. You are in search of many things, but mostly answers to the questions that trouble your heart and wreak havoc upon your soul. It is a quest that you are on, a search for the talisman that will provide you with the peace and quiet you seek.

So you run and you run but you never can find that which you are seeking. In frustration and anger you begin to howl. You snap and snarl at any creature that comes close to you because it is easier to keep them at an arms length away than to allow them get close.

Eventually you grow tired and you collapse against a block wall and stare at the world around you. The sounds of traffic bring you back to your reality. You are not a wolf any more. You are just a man. A simple person who has never forgotten what it was like to catch lightning in a bottle.

A optimist and a dreamer you believe that even though it escaped you can get it again. You are not sure how it can be done, just that it can. So every day you wake up and try. Sometimes you look at the dates on your mental calendar, that one you keep inside your head.You look and you realize that you haven’t made any progress whatsoever.

And you cannot help but wonder is it madness to keep on trying. So you close your eyes and you search for that magical place people call their center and you look for a different sort of answer. And you receive it, you are not ready to just give up.

Your decision is based upon a combination of logic and faith.There is no way to tell for certain if it is going to work. But your restless spirit is willing to continue and that is enough, for now. So you’ll continue your search for as long as it doesn’t prevent you from doing those other things that you have to do.

It is a worthy compromise. So for now you’ll pay the price that all men must pay for such actions. But that is ok, because you have always accepted that sometimes great risk must be taken for the greatest reward.