The other day I bad-mouthed my stateside magnet high school and, thinking about it, one reason I was not fond of it was that it didn't have a football team. Can you imagine a high school without a football team? I mean, really.
My DoDEA high school had a football
team and I was a cheerleader and loved it. Oh, boy, did I. I had a
boyfriend on the team. Classic Americana, huh?
So
what's the deal with football, anyway? Well, I think, for one thing,
among all the team sports it is the most blatantly an id roar. Sex and
violence. Crush your enemy (the other team) and get the hot babes (the
cheerleaders). Right out there in the open with everybody watching,
knowing deep down what it is, and cheering it on. And, in high school,
throw in all the fresh hot hormones of teen time raging through the
bodies of those perfect human specimens. And it's in the fall, echoes
of harvest festivals in the homecoming bacchanal with that big bonfire
and the couples pairing off in the shadows to, um ... you know ... their
ecstatic writhings only half-concealed by the flickering flames, all
overseen and approved by the homecoming king and queen, harvest gods
straight out of the Golden Bough.
 |
| This is my curse: I should be a self-centered bastard out for myself. |
El jefe keeps telling me that I should think about myself rather than always thinking about others first. He's right, but I can't help it. It's just the way I am. It does stress me out, though. That's why I need to get away and be by myself from time to time. That helps a lot. I'm not as bad as I used to be. Not even close. Time and experience toughen one up. Especially when you are trying to be accommodating and helpful to someone and you discover they just consider you a pushover. Okay, buster, lesson learned. Over and over again. Now when dealing with outsiders I wear emotional ceramic-plate armor, my mental firearm at Condition One, cocked and locked. Okay, sometimes I do forget.
 |
| Ain't she a pretty one? |
I finally got my familiarization training completed for the jolly King Air 260. It's got some swell aftermarket upgrades, that, among other things, really enhance its short-field capabilities, climb rate and cruising speed. I would like to take the family to Europe in it next summer -- assuming there still is a Europe then, or at least one that anyone would want to visit. If not there, Alaska, flying above the weather for a change. Oh, so nice. Will be keeping my eye out for power lever migration.
A thought that I have had is that we human beings are the nerve endings of God, the way that He connects with the material world. That's why He created us, created life in all its splendor and horror. Pain and boredom, tension, anticipation, hope, disappointment, despair, rage, joy, happiness, sadness, exuberance, lust, envy, jealousy, hatred, love...all of it, all our emotions, the feelings that mean everything to us and that make us who we are...all these are how God senses the physical reality of the universe that He created.
So it's our duty, our obligation to God, to experience everything that we can, all our body is capable of, all the emotions this life lays before us, embrace our physicality and everything it means to be alive.
Thinking about this, I believe that I have done my share to give God his money's worth, so to speak, when he created me. I was commenting the other day that all that I have done has in the end resulted in nothing. But I don't think I can really say that, don't think I have a right to say that; saying that is forgetting what it was like at the time I was doing those things, what I thought, how I felt -- in the instant of that then eternal now.
I used my brain and my body to the maximum. I helped unlock secrets of the mind, I have held brutally wounded men in my arms, I have flown faster than the speed of sound a hundred feet off the ground, I have enjoyed the passions of the flesh, I have fallen desperately in love, I have faced bitter disappointment and despair, I have --
I have had my moment.
Does all this sound like egocentric boasting? It might be if I were addressing an audience, but I am only talking to myself, reflecting on my life as it once was and now is not. Today, I have a different role, bestowed on me by God, if you like, or bestowed on myself by my own free will. That role is to prepare the next generation of life to embrace this world, to be worthy nerve endings of God. I'm thinking, of course, of my children. I am subordinate to their lives now. My sole purpose is to ready them for their moment in the sun.
“What is this thing called life? I believe
That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,
Only we do not call it so--I speak of the life
That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-
Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy
Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow
From a chemical reaction?
I think they were here already, I think the rocks
And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies
have their various consciousness, all things are conscious;
But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain
Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass
To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:
It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth
From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals
Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard
Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,
As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,
Like the cells of a man's body making one being,
They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”
― Robinson Jeffers
On a lighter note:
Blondes, A religious poem
Blondes are tempting me day and night.
Blondes in dreams trouble my restless sight.
With silken heads they rampage through my thoughts,
Full-bosomed in their sweaters and their shorts.
Or lie sunbathing on an impossible beach
Naked, aloof, continually out of reach.
On the mind's promenade, above the rocks,
Blondes go sauntering by in gauzy cotton frocks
Or flatter cameras with their negligent poses
While the sunlight all their buxom charms exposes.
While I am eating, smoking, working, talking
Through long romantic gardens they are walking.
Protect me, Lord, from these desires of flesh,
Keep me from evil, in Thy pastures fresh,
So that I may not fall, by lakes or ponds,
Into such sinful thoughts about hot blondes!
I sure gave God his money's worth, and a few other guys as well! My mother, the hot disco babe, was the same way, and so was my grandmother back in her day when the big swing bands were laying down the hot licks and the soldier boys had their pay burning a hole in their pockets. But we all settled down to be good wives and mothers, just as our husbands, after sowing their wild oats, became the best of husbands and fathers. And so the generations proceed.
