in dreams

Once upon a time I had a dream. I was going to be a Hollywood director. I would spend my free time sketching out teasers to the next James Bond feature or waste hours of time crafting titles and concepts for upcoming releases or muster ridiculous ideas for sequels to ones I knew. I began to put my imprint on video projects at school and began to go public with my dream of life in the Hollywood director's chair.

This dream never came true.

No matter which way I slice it, the dream I chased for twenty plus years changed far too many times to be achieved, so why don't I just say it. It never happened.

A love for artistically inclined independent films took hold. A full-on growth of myself as a struggling writer gained momentum. A major conflict between art and commerce probed my philosophical inner Jekyll or Hyde. A bevy of projects that saw more darkness than light drowned the idealistic perfectionist within. And a discovery of the theatre as an immediate way to create and share art with an audience ensured all bets were off.

Things have changed too much. I am too jaded by life and myriad experience for this specific childhood dream to ever come true. The loose ends of this story represent somebody else entirely and are not really a part of the same tale. Don't get me wrong. I still come alive when the creative juices are flowing but this dream died within me many years ago. Underneath everything else lurks a figurative garage full of wishful thinking and naive imaginings.

When there's one foot in the distant past, one foot in the perhaps foreseeable future, the main results are lumbar issues and a difficulty walking.

So, what are today's dreams? That's what really matters.

in purgatory

When I got a job at the local regional airport I knew it was for a reason. There's something notable about being a person for whom fundamental change is occurring, who likewise winds up working at a place that acts as the bridge between two points. Airports are the places that connect the here with the there. As a man coming from one life and fueling myself up for what's next, an airport is the perfect hub to travel to everyday.

But of course all of my poetic ideals don't always come to fruition. Sometimes a place is just a place with a function. And as far as airports go, this one gets literally empty and amazingly pin-drop quiet. One night I thought I was about to be locked in. These are the times when it appears to be more of a set for an airport than an actual one. There's something so fake about the whole matter that I sometimes feel like maybe I'll catch a glimpse of Oz behind the curtain.

But alas, no such discoveries do come about and instead I'm stuck with a personal purgatory - one that has been dragging me down and steadily pushing me further and further off the edge of my own sanity....

new path(s)

You just don’t get it, do you – this person you’re talking to right now – I don’t know who this guy is  - I know it’s me of course – But, who I am – I got no clue – I was married – I thought I’d be with her until I got burned up or she put me in the ground with her non-stop talking about bullshit that normal people don’t waste their breath on – commercials, what she ate that day – like some colors are more healing than others – now I got no wife - it’s like I swear – it’s like my life just jumped the tracks – now I’m running on someone else's tracks - now I am leading someone else's life – you, you got possibilities – this gig doesn't work out – you could get married – bake cakes – open a dress shop – I got no dress shop – I got no future – this is all I got – this is all I am – don’t make me change how I do it, Laura – one more change and I think I’m done. (Lt. Shea from RESCUE ME 2.5 'Sensitivity')

I remember the first time I saw the 'Rescue Me' episode this quote is from, back in 2004. I recall really feeling for Ken and the plight of his life falling down around him and the only worthwhile piece that had a remaining vestige was his sense of self. I remember distinctly wishing never to feel that total devastating loss of everything and the ensuing grappling at straws.

The strange thing, though, is that life jumping the track can be a really positive thing. At least that's the way I am viewing things now. New beginnings can be a damn beautiful thing. Unearthing buried parts of oneself, exploring uncharted territories of ones soul, whittling away what's rotted, and forging ahead along new paths, though sometimes painfully cathartic, seem to be just what keeps life fresh and worth living.

second chances

Growing up in my household divorce was always a dirty word. It was what happened in the distant regions of my family. This was something that went down within the ranks of the large clan of cousins I grew up knowing so little about, but not in our world. Yet there’s an infrequently recounted tale of my sister as a child making my parents promise to never get divorced. Sometimes I don’t know if adults realize really how much children gobble up ways and means from their example. I know that I learned and in part had to unlearn certain key things about interactions with others, conflict resolution, ways to sustain a relationship, manners in which to deal with difficulty, and on and on. I don’t know if one can prevent having influence.

But divorce did happen in my immediate family. My brother’s first marriage didn’t last long and brought with it a child who quickly became neglected by key members of my family and his ex-wife was quickly on the chopping block from all of the photo albums and in conversation. I believe the divorce was ultimately a good idea for all, but I wouldn’t say the same of the reaction. Ever since I was a kid I could see through to some of the grayer regions of life on this planet. Growing up on so much mainstream culture, the presumptions grew and grew about the ways things are as opposed to the way things are not. Movies and television inadvertently taught a guide to me for how things would pan out.

My brother’s situation and so many others real and fictionalized showed me endless bitterness and vile disregard between people who once shared love or at least words of love or at least a toothpaste tube. So, as the years went on and distance, heartache, and disappointment began interfering with dreams and schemes my wife and I had conjured at some idealist time in our past, the word divorce started to come up. I said it. Then she said it. Then we didn’t say it at all, but instead let the big ol’ elephant speak for us. It became such a tug-of-war of wills, hopes, dreams, and ultimately very differing ideals and expectations that the ties eventually had to break fully.

But the fear of bitterness and being like those others that had long come before really affected the situation. There’s really no guide for something whose oft-used companion phrase amicable doesn’t quite do justice. Two people in such a situation can’t really jump right into something else without awkwardness and other heightened emotions. Or comfortably be roommates. Or be friends without benefits. So, out comes the eraser. The quick fix is gently but noticeably erasing one another out of the other’s life. It seems to become about finding other places to orbit, changing the routine, starting over along some other path, because that train has sure as hell run out of track.

What then, though? Questions galore fill the mind. Where to go next? What’s on the bucket list? You know the one, the addendum to the real one, the one that would never have happened in that prior lifetime. As good, bad, or somewhere in between things may have been, was that the single opportunity that’s going to come down the pike this lifetime?