Contrasts keep rising to the surface of the daily pond that is life. It becomes more molecular. It becomes more deconstructed. It turns the tables. It smites denial. It mocks determination. It ridicules the core. The words of my friend Leonard come to mind:
It’s like our visit to the moon or to that other starI guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.
The wisdom and point of view of my sons amaze me on a level like I could never have imagined. What they have gleaned from years growing up is beyond what I ever was conscious of. In the limited days that I had with my father, the words he left me with, what are their words for me when they have traveled so far beyond me?
It is one thing to feel the obsolescence yourself but to perceive it from your legacy is a sobering thought. Instantly I travel through time and space. 11:37 PM where the silence and darkness are cut and smashed. That one moment happens. You realize you should have spent more time being real. I cannot change that moment that has been playing over and over inside of me for the last 27 years.
Here today, I am drawing a line. I know I cannot change anything about that night, or all the days, months, and years prior. Today, however, I will not allow it to happen again. Not to me, not to them. Of course, contemplating this allows me once again, to burn another breakfast.
There is so much that I can do. Clearly, my sons have assimilated all of the tactical finesse that I live each day with. It is so important to show them that there is more. When the moment comes when there is no way for me to say any words, I hope that I took the time to have already said them all.
It’s like our visit to the moon or to that other starI guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.
-Leonard Cohen, 1977
-Death of a Ladies Man