• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to footer

The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

  • About Jack
    • Other Places You Can Find Me
  • Contact Me
    • Disclosure
  • About Jack
    • Other Places You Can Find Me
  • Contact Me
    • Disclosure

Archives for November 2014

More Sex, Lies & Blogging

November 18, 2014 by Jack Steiner 2 Comments

SEX SELLS (Girls just wanna have fun)
This post was supposed to be one where I repurposed the content in Sex, Lies & Blogging- The Post That Went Viral but I changed my mind.

Something about the responses to What Happens When People Don’t Comment On Our Blogs? and She Saved My Heart made me decide to go a different direction.

I am not entirely sure why or what turned my head and made me see something different. Might be because I wanted to write another story about Remorse Brown or because Sometimes Bad Headlines Don’t Matter but most of it is probably because I am on fire right now.

It is hard not to be angry when I see pictures of people handing out candy after a terrorist attack. Hard not to be angry when I don’t see outrage when men walk into a synagogue with knives and guns and start slaughtering people and the headlines and article offer some sort of moral equivalency explanation for the unforgivable.

Authentic and Raw

Life has been a bit more challenging as of late. The work has been slower and the cash flow hasn’t been anywhere close to what it needs to be. An acquaintance described it as bad luck and bad timing but that is not how I see it.

When you are up against it, you are up against it.

There is a difference between feeling a little pressure and a lot.

But I was built to last.

I was made to dance in the fire and march through the storms and I do what is required so that I get to the other side. In a few moments I’ll go take a shower, get dressed and visit my mother.

She had surgery today. It is supposed to be relatively minor and if all went well she’ll be in the hospital for a few days.

That is my expectation but she is old enough now that I pay more attention to standard medical procedures. Mom would be pissed if she heard me say that, she’d say she is not old enough for me to think like that.

She’d tell you no one believes all of her kids are over forty and she’d smile.

When I tell her some of the guys and I have started talking about whether we want to do something big for our 50th birthdays she shakes her head and tells me that I still have more than a few years before it happens.

But sometimes she looks at me and asks if it is really five years.

I get it because sometimes I look at my kids and wonder how they reached this place. I suppose all parents do it.

****

The authentic and raw hold my attention in ways that others don’t. That is because sometimes I think my best writing comes from my being able to tear into the painful places inside my head.

I used to worry and wonder about it because I was worried about whether I could call upon the gods of writing if I was happy and content. But then I thought about it and found posts that showed I could do it and had done it.

Don’t Take Blogging Too Seriously

It might sound like a contradiction but I really don’t take this business all that seriously. You can read posts like Do You Miss Old Fashioned Blogging? and send me emails saying I contradict myself but I’ll tell you that you don’t get it.

You don’t understand where I am coming from.

I had to make a course correction not because life was a motherfucker but because I was dying.

It wasn’t literal but it didn’t change that what I was doing was killing me from the inside out. I had to go this route, had to follow my heart.

That was a lot to swallow and a big change but I accepted it because I knew it would make me feel better and it did. Did because I started the journey to live a life that would fill my heart and soul with joy.

Doesn’t mean there won’t be bumps in the road or bandits to deal with. Doesn’t mean that sometimes the desperados will find a way steal my horse and or sabotage my car because that crap comes with it all.

The only question lies in how I choose to respond and to reply.

****

When you don’t take blogging seriously you come up with goofy headlines like:

  • Why Do Clowns Make Better Lovers Than Mimes?
  • I Am The Bruce Lee Of Dad Bloggers
  • What Do Broken Condoms Have To Do With Blogging
  • 500 Ways To Have Better Sex & Earn Money From Blogging

It means you just write and you don’t worry about how many people will share, tweet, comment or pin your posts.

You don’t worry about whether you ever appear on Huffpo or anywhere else. You just write and you don’t have to worry about gaming the system.

I Hear Music

Some people will find these tales and moments to be of interest and will join us on the journey and others won’t. Some might walk with us for a ways and some for the whole distance, I don’t know.

All I know is that I hear music inside my head and know there are stories waiting to be told.

So I am going to wander upon the trails that have already been marked and blaze some that haven’t in search of the song.

Some days you burn the bridges so that you can’t go backwards and can only go ahead. Today I am carrying a torch and lighting following a fire in the sky that I can see day or night.

What about you?

Share
Pin
Share
0 Shares

Filed Under: Life

Tuesday, afternoon, I’m just beginning to see

November 17, 2014 by Jack Steiner 2 Comments

The open road

 

I didn’t know how to begin this post, didn’t know where to go with it or how to make it tell the tale I want to tell in a such a way that you wouldn’t have to read it more than once because you wouldn’t have to read to know the truth of my words.

Sometimes the hardest things to say are to the person who you most need to hear what is written upon your heart. You struggle to come up with the letters that serve as the best teammates, the ones that don’t struggle with the others and understand how to take a person by the hand and gently lead them to where you need them to go.

“And I need you more than want you
And I want you for all time
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line

And I need you more than want you
And I want you for all time
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line”
Wichita Linemen– Glen Campbell

Somewhere along that open road I found something mystical and magnificent waiting for  me. Somewhere along the road I found what I had spent my entire life looking for and I recognized that I was driving away from where I was supposed to be, driving away from where I wanted to be but doing it because it had to be done.

And as the miles passed beneath my tires there were more than a few moments where I felt like I had to go back, had to stop the car to turn around and get you.

Get you because you are supposed to be on my right side, sharing adventures and living the minutes and moments with me. It is not supposed to be as it is now, not supposed to be one apart from the other but sometimes that is how it goes.

But it doesn’t have to be that way forever.

“So I looked at the scenery,
She read her magazine;
And the moon rose over an open field.
“Kathy, I’m lost”, I said,
Though I know she was sleeping.
“I’m empty and aching and
I don’t know why.”
America– Simon & Garfunkel

Every moment apart felt like forever and the farther I went the further it all felt.   I took a deep breath and told myself it was silly and foolish to act so childish.

But when I saw lightning fly across the sky and heard the sound of thunder I realized why my heart was pounding, saw that twister heading straight for the car and knew that when it hit things would get nasty.

Pulled over, ran for cover, took a deep breath and as my body was battered I closed my eyes, saw your eyes looking back at mine and heard music playing.

“The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave
To the dark and the endless skies, my love
To the dark and the endless skies”
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face– Roberta Flack

When the roar of thunder faded I opened my eyes and told myself we weren’t in Kansas any more. The car was gone and I was left alone under a sky streaked with flecks of blue and gray.

That highway wasn’t empty any more but I didn’t recognize any of the buildings I saw or the names of the places on the signs alongside of it. For a moment I wanted to scream because all that I had worked for seemed to gone, all the blood sweat and tears was for naught.

And then I heard something, couldn’t say what or where it came from, just knew I needed to find it. But I was exhausted from all that I had been through so I headed off to the side of the road and put my back up against the tree.

Decided I would wait for nightfall and follow our moon back to whence I had came. As I closed my eyes I saw yours looking back at me and heard that song again.

“Tuesday, afternoon,
I’m just beginning to see,
Now I’m on my way,
It doesn’t matter to me,
Chasing the clouds away.

Something, calls to me,
The trees are drawing me near,
I’ve got to find out why
Those gentle voices I hear
Explain it all with a sigh.”
Tuesday, afternoon– The Moody Blues

Filed Under: Fragments of Fiction

Breakfast In America

November 16, 2014 by Jack Steiner 2 Comments

Country Waffles Breakfast by Ernesto Andrade
Country Waffles Breakfast by Ernesto Andrade

If you are of a certain age Breakfast In America might make you think of Supertramp and I can’t blame you, because if often does for me, mostly because Take The Long Way Home has become one of my personal anthems.

But most of the time when I think about breakfast in America it is tied into food and into travel.

****

When I was a kid my folks used to load my 86 sisters and I into our station wagon and we’d head out onto the road for family vacations.

I’d spend most of those trips in the seat right behind my father looking out of the window or reading a book. Many of those moments are burned into my memory, endless hours of staring at train tracks, looking at farmland, the ocean or rolling fields of crops all the while listening to whatever song mom played on the radio or cassette player.

Eventually we’d stop at some restaurant along the road and my sisters and I would go play with the cigarette machines they had in the lobby, you know the ones that had those Foosball like handles you’d pull on or we’d go see if someone forgot to take the change from the payphones and nag our parents about why it was taking so long to be seated.

Sometimes my sisters would fall asleep in the booth and it would be just my parents and I awake at the table. In the background I’d hear them play some of the easy listening music of the time and I’d feel like a big shot because I was the only kid who was still awake at the table.

Decades later those songs still take me back while others bring along the early memories and ones that came later on.

It is an interesting mix of memories because you have the boy, the teenager, the twenty something, husband and father all wrapped up in those songs.

And then you have someone else, old Jack the guy who has driven and or flown thousands of miles by himself for work. That guy is an amalgamation of all who came before and yet he is his own individual.

Don’t know if that makes sense to you but I get it and sometimes that is all that is important.

What I know for certain is there have been moments during those individual trips where I saw/experienced things that I wished I could have shared with another.

Moments where I smiled and thought about how to record that minute in time so I could share it later and then laughed because I knew there was no way to show you what I saw.

All I could do was hope to have a chance to create new moments and memories down the road at a different place and time.

Travel By Car Versus Air

1967 Chevy Camaro, Joe Ross
1967 Chevy Camaro, Joe Ross

My children don’t know the road trip with the same sort of intimacy as I do. They have been a part of some road trips but most of them include plane travel and though that is special too sometimes I think they have missed out on some things.

Because when you are not trapped inside a giant metal tube you can stop any time you want. When you see some little joint with a wagon wheel on the roof you can pull over and check it out.

You can stop at Pea Soup Andersen’s in Buellton for Pea Soup and clean bathrooms or hit family restaurants in Santa Barbara that are supposedly haunted. You can visit ghost towns that were big in the gold rush or go see where Wyatt Earp and company took on their enemies.

These moments are harder to come by in part because of finances and time constraints. My dad had a very healthy vacation plan so we could go away for weeks at a time.

But unlike me my kids didn’t have to wait until they were 16 to start flying from state to state and place to place.

They don’t have the memories of hitting a Motel 6 and hearing mom tell dad to turn up the television because the people in the room next door were too loud or still tease their sisters about the time they got car sick and threw up on each other

But that doesn’t mean they don’t have some very good memories or that they won’t get the opportunity to create some more because they will.

One of the many reasons why I am working on changing our situation is to put us in a position where we can create more more of those moments and spend less time trying to chase enough change to pay daily expenses.

Life is meant to be lived, not endured.

Breakfast In America

Breakfast is one of my favorite meals, especially those moments where we are able to really indulge ourselves and enjoy fine food, great coffee and the sort of company that makes you pleased to be a person and not a plant.

And believe me, I have met some people I wish were plants because then they would have an excuse for their amazing personalities.

But I suppose it is both fair and important to add that if I have learned anything in my travels it is that a very fine meal is never the same when you eat it alone than when you have company.

Last week I went on an interview in which I sat at the top of a large building and looked down upon BJs. It is hard not to smile because it is a place where I have had some wonderful experiences, some of which truly blew me away.

Moments where you share a meal with someone who understands you and in turn is understood by you. Moments where you don’t have to fill the silence with words because you can communicate just as effectively with a glance or a smile as you can with sound.

******

When my son tells me about how the girls at school won’t stop messing with him I tell him that I am sure at least one of them likes him. He tells me it is ridiculous and that someone that likes you would never mistreat you and I laugh.

I tell him sometimes the people we care about are the ones who make us act the goofiest and that girls are very good at making us feel foolish. He shakes his head at me and tells me he’ll never have a girlfriend and yells at me when I laugh.

“Dad, why can’t you take me seriously?”

“Because I know you and I know me. I know enough to know that some girl will catch your eye and one day you’ll find one that you will want to spend time with more than anyone.”

“You aren’t me and you can’t know that. You have sisters, so you have to know how irritating they are.”

“I do and I can promise you no one will make you crazier. Some day there will be a girl who holds your heart and you will be furious that she makes you feel so damn stupid. And just when you can’t figure out if you are an idiot for giving her this power she’ll do something and you’ll wonder how you ever could have been angry with her.”

He shakes his head at me and tells me if he becomes a father it is because he is going to adopt a child.

“One day you and I are going to have a very serious conversation about safe sex because you are going to discover there is a world here you know nothing about. One of my great hopes for you is that you find the right person to have breakfast with and that they are the person you want to have breakfast in America with.”

Share
Pin1
Share
1 Shares

Filed Under: Life

Life Has Killed The Dream I Dreamed

November 15, 2014 by Jack Steiner 1 Comment


Gerry Rafferty is singing about Baker Street and I am thinking about the life I once dreamed of and the one I lead now. Thinking about how very different it is and how today it reminds me of a bad meal.

From the outside looking in all looks to be as it should be.

The table is set with beautiful plates and silverware, nice centerpiece and all of the expected accouterments except the steak isn’t cooked the way I like it, the mashed potatoes look like they can from an ancient can and taste like they were scooped out of a rotten skull and the vegetables are just nasty.

If it weren’t for the rolls there would be nothing here that tasted right but that doesn’t fix the disappointment or cure the hunger in my belly.

It is not the first time my meal fell short of expectations nor will it be the last. Sometimes this is just how it goes.

Life Has Killed The Dream I Dreamed

The music moves on and George Jones is singing He Stopped Loving Her Today.

My eyes are closed while my fingers work the keyboard. Got one kid wandering around the house while the other softly snores her way into the night.

My son the wanderer is frustrated with me because I don’t understand his position and told him I don’t have to. When you are my age it is a minor disagreement that will have no lasting consequence but the middle schooler believes otherwise.

He tells me he is getting really angry and I tell him to take it out on his pillow. Dad doesn’t always have to explain himself nor does life have to make sense.

Some things just are and I need him to go to bed because I need him to go to bed.

Midnight isn’t that far off and we both need things from this time. He needs the sleep and I need the quiet of the house to myself.  I like every age and love how we can have deep and sophisticated discussions.

But sometimes we bang heads, just as I did with my father. I remember those moments with more clarity than my son knows and I understand more than he realizes but this is one of those times where I have to be selfish.

Have to be selfish because we are ensconced in a particularly challenging moment and I am struggling to get through it. Doesn’t matter how confident I am about my ability to figure it out because we all hit those moments where we find the knot at the end of the rope and just hang on.

Life killed the dream I dreamed and now I am figuring out where it leaves me.

The Carousel Horse

The carousel horse I am riding is on the far side of the sun on the bottom part of the dark side of the moon. Experience tells me it is going to go back up and it probably will soon but when the waves knock your ass below the surface you don’t open your mouth until you feel air upon your cheek.

The dog and I wander through a few rooms. He watches me throw some ice into a glass and pour some Scotch, wags his tail at me and smiles when I tell him it won’t be much longer.

We head upstairs and step inside my daughter’s room.

Don’t know why she decided to sleep on the floor tonight but she has a blanket, iPod and pillow with her. Dark curls cover one eye exposing a button nose and a bunch of freckles and I stop to watch her sleep.

There is a lot I can say about dads and daughters and it would never tell you enough about her or the guilt I sometimes feel because I haven’t given her as much as her brother got.

He went to private school through fifth grade and she only got to go through second because I just couldn’t make it happen another year. Sometimes she asks me to send her back for sixth grade but I won’t do it primarily because it really doesn’t make sense for her to go back for just one year.

I think it would be much harder for her to step back into that world for just one year, especially since it would mean not starting middle school at the same time with the other kids.

But when you are ten going on thirty you don’t always agree with or understand why mom and dad make other choices so sometimes there are hard moments.

Rainy Days

Sinatra is singing It Was a Very Good Year and it is hard not smile. Some of it is because of the memories it brings with it and some because I dream about writing a song like this.

We are in living during the time of rainy days and cloudy skies. During the time when you look out your window and wonder what it is you are looking at because the drops sliding down the glass obscure and distort your view.

That dream I dreamed floats behind my eyes and I wave goodbye to it. It is not the first time I have done that and it might not be the last time.

I am doing all I can to just roll with the changes and to remember that some of those dreams stopped being interesting to me long before I let go of them.

Some had their moments in the sun longer than they deserved because inertia made it easier to maintain than move but those days are mostly gone.

Now I am pretty good at rolling with it and just going along with the current but there are those moments where the old habits rear their head and the challenges are harder than they should be.

But most of the time when I remember that I know things and look at the accomplishments of the recent past I smile because this moment in time won’t last much longer.

Filed Under: Life

What Happens When People Don’t Comment On Our Blogs?

November 14, 2014 by Jack Steiner 20 Comments

The art of silence... byVinoth Chandar
The art of silence… by Vinoth Chandar

Sometimes blogging can be a very intimate and very personal experience. There are things we share here that would never be uttered aloud to anyone, not those we love or those we don’t.

Those posts are raw, authentic and revealing.

Sometimes when I read them I wonder about what words I should use in my comment. I wonder how to tell someone I appreciated what they said in a way that won’t be offensive, irritating or hurtful because what I just read was so powerful it left me sitting in silence.

When I switch seats and write a post like that it is never because I want comments but because the story I told is too much for me to remain silent about. It is too strong, too real and too raw so I put the words down on paper and the pressure is eased.

Most of the time I don’t care if anyone comments because that wasn’t why I wrote the post but every now and then the silence becomes deafening and I wonder if I am working alone in a vacuum.

Why Are You Crying?

When I was a junior in college I spent the night with a classmate. We didn’t know each other well. Since it was a night class I would sometimes walk her to her car but aside from the few minutes it took to go from the classroom to the car we hadn’t said much to each other.

I don’t remember what led to my going home with her that night. I think we might have suggested studying for a quiz, but my memory is a bit fuzzy there.

What I do remember is we got really friendly and that somewhere in the midst of it I realized she wasn’t looking at me. I asked her if she was ok and she said she was fine and things resumed.

Not long afterwards our activities finished and I lay next to her in shock because she was in tears. She wasn’t sobbing but she crying hard enough for me to be confused because there had been no sign of it.

“Why are you crying?”

“Because you are not him, please go.”

I got dressed, walked out of the room and went home trying to figure out what I had done wrong.

Later that week I asked a couple of my female friends if they could help explain what had happened. They both looked at me as if I was an idiot and said I was the rebound guy.

When I said I felt sort of used they rolled their eyes at me but that is a story for a different time.

What Happens When People Don’t Comment On Our Blogs?

Sometimes when I think about why people do or do not comment I remember that night with my classmate and think about what it means to be ready to put ourselves out there.

I think about the importance to be willing to put yourself out there and how it can be scary to do so. It is not easy to bare your soul in a post and share the soft underbelly of your psyche.

When you share the private and personal you open yourself up to criticism from people who don’t know you and who might not have the ‘proper context’ for understanding what it is you wrote.

They don’t know you.

They aren’t familiar with your sense of humor. They don’t always recognize when you are serious or when you are playing and sometimes their comments reflect that.

In concept it makes me ask why publish a post that you fear will lead to your getting blasted. Why publish something that opens you up to comments you might not like.

It could be easier not to to open yourself up but then again sometimes that tale you haven’t told is breaking your heart and busting your chops. Sometimes it is so eager to break  free you can feel it chipping away at your teeth.

When you want to share it because you want to be heard it can be hard not to get a comment or two so the question you have to ask and answer yourself is what is more important to you.

Some Weeks Later

“Jack, I owe you an apology. Our night was a mistake. You didn’t do anything wrong, it was me.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded my head.

“I have good news. I got back together with my boyfriend. If you see us talking please don’t say anything to him.”

I nodded my head again.

“Don’t worry, I can’t think of any cool way to say I slept with your girlfriend and made her cry.”

Ok, I didn’t really say that but I was thinking it.

Twenty-five years later I look back and think about how much I ended up learning from that one moment in time.

Because I can look at it as being when I really started to understand how good intentions could go awry and how people remember how you make them feel more than they remember what you say.

That is a lesson that has equal application personally and professionally.

Filed Under: Blogging

Shadows Hide The Daylight

November 14, 2014 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

A good story has a beginning, a middle and an end. It is filled with interesting characters that face and overcome challenges. A good story will make you grin, but a great story will make you smile. We’re not talking about the kind of smile you give your neighbor when you pass by on the way down the driveway to collect the newspaper.

No, a great story provides you with the kind of smile that tells that world that your spirit has just been lifted and your heart is full of joy. Some people will tell you that these stories are few and far between. If you listen to them they’ll convince you that the reason those stories are so impressive is because of their scarcity. They’ll claim that the lack of frequency, their uncommon nature are part of what make them so special.

Not me, no sir, not I. I won’t give any credence to such nonsense because I know better. Not because I am good at spinning a yarn or adept at telling tales. I know better because I have lived such moments and have an eye for identifying what is special about the seemingly ordinary.

It is a gift that was given to me at birth or so I like to claim. An ability that is not limited to myself, it is really more of a skill that can be gained and improved upon. All it takes is desire and practice. Give of yourself and you’ll find that it exists for you too.

At least that is how I see it. That is the perspective that I have gained after what feels like a thousand years of riding the roller coasters of life. I have loved and lost. I have been loved. I have allowed myself to roam the fields of fire and burned because that was what was required. It wasn’t always easy and there have been more than a few moments in which I have been convinced that I have earned the title of “moronic fool.”

There a million different stories and reasons why. The simple and easiest explanation is to say that I suffered from Don Quixote syndrome and attacked too many windmills. Or so I told myself in moments of doubt and frustration. Some of those were hard times, dark days for myself.

They were days in which dancing in the fire brought more pain than success. Days in which I’d look in the mirror and ask myself if I was suffering from delusions of grandeur. I’d wonder why my reflection didn’t step out from behind the frame and start beating me over the head with whatever object was handy.

It might have made me happier because then I could say that I was crazy, and not in the crazy like a fox way. But I wasn’t crazy then and I am not crazy now. I am now and was then in complete control of my faculties. If anything I suffered from impatience and a fear of what could happen.

But the reason that I think that I am living out one of the great stories that is that I found my heart. Found her and lost her.

“Hello. How are you?
Have you been alright, through all those lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely nights
That’s what I’d say. I’d tell you everything
If you’d pick up that telephone yeah yeah yeah

Hey. How you feelin?
Are you still the same?
Don’t you realize the things we did, we did, were all for real, not a dream?
I just can’t believe
They’ve all faded out of view yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah”
Telephone Line- Electric Light Orchestra

The how and why don’t matter or should I say that they belong to to two people and if you have to ask then you aren’t one of them. That is not to say that I won’t share bits and pieces or that you can’t guess. I don’t say that for the purpose of encouraging you too either, but I know enough about people to know that some of you can’t help it.

And to that other, well I told you a thousand years ago that where I walk thunder and lightning follow. I said that I have been forced to learn how to ride out the storms because that is just how it has been. I promised passion. I promised fire. One kiss and nothing would ever be the same.

I can’t say that you gave me your heart or that I gave you mine because we already shared that. It is hokey, it is a cliche and a million other things but it is true. You know it and I know it. Don’t need anyone else to approve or understand because that is not who we are.

“I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion –
I have shudder’d at it.
I shudder no more.
I could be martyr’d for my religion
Love is my religion
And I could die for that.
I could die for you.”
~ by John Keats ~

Some would call those mere words on a page. They’d ask for more than a few lines as proof. Or they might point out the inconsistencies and inadequacies of those who directed those words to their attention. And it might be understood why and how they do it.

It is easier to run away from some things. Easier to hide from the spotlight and to avoid its glare. I know because I have done both. I have lived on both sides of the fence.

“You will never know true happiness
until you have truly loved,
and you will never understand
what pain really is
until you have lost it.”
~ by Anonymous ~

“I’d like to run away
From you,
But if you didn’t come
And find me …
I would die.”
~ by Shirley Bassey ~

There is so much truth that. Such raw honesty and such power. The joy and ecstasy of true happiness can inspire you to reach for the heights you might not otherwise seek. But the flip side can be crushing. To have such a love and lose it is heart wrenching. It will strip you bare and leave you naked and hurting far more quickly than one can imagine.

Instead of basking in the warmth of the fire you find yourself burning, screaming for someone to put out the fire. And the person you seek isn’t there to quench those flames. For whatever reason they are gone, moved on to greener or different pastures.

But if you can withstand the flames and sustain yourself there is more to be found. If you maintain the presence of mind to be aware there are lessons to be learned. If you can catch your breath you can find a way to fortify your heart and to build a new foundation.

You can call that hyperbole or label it juvenile prose with an unhealthy tinge of melodrama if you’d like. Perhaps it is. I’d say that is a just a little bit to the left of such a place and that if we included some sort of line of about a phoenix raising from the ashes than your comment would be well earned.

But that is not the case and that is part of what makes this one of the great stories. Because we started a story whose end must now wait. It is case of the tortoise and the hare, this is not a sprint. This is not so different from the runners you watched above. The men who ran alongside the waves did not have a finish line in sight. They ran because that was what was required to get them to where they want to go. They understood that the finish line was somewhere down the road.

And that is how I see it. The race for my heart isn’t going to be finished any time soon. But one day I will see that line and when the time is right I’ll cross over it.

Cradle of Stars

I am running with the moon again, racing under a starry night along a desert highway for no other reason than because.

Because I can’t sit still and wait for a sign to let me know the time is now. Can’t watch the heavens to see if a fireball lights up the evening sky letting me know it is time to roll.

Running because I swallowed some of that lightning we trapped in a bottle and when you hear the thunder roar must respond.

So I am running away from the past and heading towards the future because the only way to improve the present is to go through it.

Running because I did what they said couldn’t be done and if it happened once it can happen again, but that doesn’t make the moments any more palatable.

Doesn’t make the madness disappear or chase away the shadows that try to hide the daylight.

So we run towards the sun, arms outreached, feet flying across the sand determined to get to the other side but not at the expense of missing the moments of the present.

“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” ― Robert Frost

Eyes blurred with sweat obscure my vision but exercise clears the clutter from my mind and sweeps away the inner cobwebs. Inside my head I silently sing along with the boss…

“Well every river, baby, it runs dry
Until the sun’s torn from the sky
Till every feel you’ve felt burst free
Gone tumblin’ down into the sea”
Janey, Don’t You Lose Heart -Bruce Springsteen

The miles pass under my feet and time chases the moon from its place in the sky. Soon dawn will break and the new day will start and all of courage will have the opportunity to begin again too.

Editor’s Note: Part of this comes from a story I originally published here.

Filed Under: Fragments of Fiction

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Page 4
  • Page 5
  • Page 6
  • Go to Next Page »

Footer

Things Someone Wrote

The Fabulous Archives

Copyright © 2025 · Jack Steiner

 

Loading Comments...