Yesterday I woke up like any other day and as I laid there contemplating the day I thought about my life...I mean who doesn't. I thought you know I have a pretty darn good life...I have my health, great friends, a decent place to lay my head and yet there is something missing...something I can't quite figure out....I thought previously it was my purpose...my meaning but I think still it's bigger than that. Since I couldn't lay there anymore with those thoughts spinning around in my head I got up and thought I'll do something productive before I have to open the building at 7:30am. It was about 10 after 6am - ugh...I'd love to be able to sleep in again. Anyway, I popped in the new CD my friend Troy made me (Jay Brannan - goddamned - that's the cd's name...not a comment from me) and listened to the mellow soothing tunes that filled my apartment. He's amazing (Jay not Troy although I guess I could include Troy in there as well)....you should so check him out....anyway I started thinking about how words are so powerful and how simple a fact that really is. You can change the world with words. I wish I had that gift but I'm a babbler so in one way I guess that works. Anyway this thought about words and their power was dancing about in my head when I went to work.
I work part-time in my apt. rental office a few times a month and have really enjoyed the $$ off my rent as well as some of the residents I've gotten to know better. Jim is 86, a war vet, a former lawyer and recently loss his partner (a woman) of over 30 years. He is very active and knowledgeable and loves to come sit and chat with me and share stories. He's twice divorced and after having spent the last 30 years of his life with the love of his life(or his soul mate as he refers to her) he finds himself like some of us with some extra time on his hands. I get that he's lonely and that he may not quite know how to live life without that other presence around him anymore but he sure has lived. He saw the world via the war and is very politically active today. He was telling me about the time they were told to clean up their barracks and they had a visit from Eleanor Roosevelt. You could see from the expression on his face how impressed he was about that visit even still today. That impression 40 some odd years ago was still fresh in his mind. He of course followed up with the fact that she wasn't what you would call a pretty woman but he was clearly impressed she had come to see them.
He then told a story about being on the front lines and how he told the preist that was with him he hoped he could pull the trigger when the time came and the preist said to him....it's out of your hands now and Jim replied...no it's not...I still have to be the one to pull the trigger. Such wise insights even now isn't it. We think our lives or our destiny is out of our control but really...as long as we are still breathing and thinking...isn't it reaally up to us to pull the trigger?
Lately I've really been into music...not the blaring dance club kind of music, although I do enjoy shaking my bootie, but the stuff with a gentle tone and messages behind the words.....it makes me think alot of people out in the world are searching for the elusive missing link...at least that's what the music is telling me.....it seems alot of the music I'm into lately is about questioning one's own life...these lyrics from Jay Brannan really summed it up for me....
"do you want a lover, or do you want a life? one hand or the other, the butter or the bread knife? do you choose winter, spring, summer or fall? it's driving me crazy that i can't have it all."
Why can't we have it all? Why do we have to choose...I want it all.
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