Throwing the Heat

Life has its ways of throwing curve balls. I've done my best to avoid those by never even getting up to bat.

You have to love baseball metaphors. I'm not much for the game but I do love those metaphors. In fact, I think the sayings are a bigger part of North American life then the game itself.

To listen to an avid baseball fan describe the crack of the bat or the flight of a ball to home base is like listening to Edgar Allan Poe describe the lost Lenore. You won't find that kind of poetic dreamery in any other sport.

Is dreamery even a word?

You'll have to forgive me. Sometimes I get a little long winded. Sometimes I'm right to the point. I think it depends on which of my many personalities have chosen to dominate that day. Maybe I should name them. Let's call this one "Wyonna, the Wanter." Not to be confused with "Purrsia the Ponderer" who are quite similiar at times but Purrsia is completely symbolic and even more long winded then Wyonna.

Anyways...as I was saying, I've always been afraid to step up to the plate. The fear of striking out always seemed far worse then never playing the game. When I was a kid I use to fake injury before the teams were even picked because I knew I would get picked last and the humility was something I could live without.

Of course, humility always had a way of finding me. Usually in the form of irony. In a game of baseball, Irony would be the pitcher and Humility would be the umpire. I would be sitting on the bench, faking a leg spasm, watching those who once sat beside me rounding the bases, as I nurse a case of rot-gut self-loathing. Suddenly, I would catch a smile crease the face of Irony as Humility signed her a play. She would nod and pull back on the ball. Those two little fingers would grip the stiches of the leather, and just before the release I would see her eyes dart in my direction. I would catch her devilish gaze as she released and even though I knew what was about to happen, I wouldn't be able to duck in time to avoid the inevitable slam to my face. And as I lay there in the dirt, I would hear the baratone boom of Humility's call, "You are outta there!"

Of course, as I got older, humility became more of a friend to me then I would have thought. When you spend your life stripped of most dignity, pride no longer becomes an issue, and you become more resillant to those sticky little situations that tend to befall us all at some point in life. What I mean to say is that even though humility may have caused my bruises it was always there afterwards to smother my eye in a big hunk of raw meat and tell me everything will be alright in the morning.

I still think Irony is a bitch though.


Why am I bothering with these overused, overripened baseball analogies you may ask? Recently I was faced with the decision to step up to bat and take a swing. This time I took it.

I struck out. Several times in fact.

But since I kept getting pitched to I just kept swinging. On the third attempt I hit it, not hard but hard enough. I made it to first base. I stood there flustered and bewildered, waiting for the chance to run the distance. It never happened. The game ended and I went back to the bench, while Irony knocked the mud from her cleats, smiled and gave me a shrug.

This time I smiled back though. I may not have made it all the way around the bases, but hell, this time when she aimed at me at least I had a club in my hand to defend myself.

An Introduction of Such

It's been awhile.
So long, in fact that I've become a stranger to you.
The written word, that is.

Please forgive me. It was not intentional, you see. Somewhere along the line I became disillusioned, and instead of turning to you, as I had done so often in the past, I blamed you for everything that had gone wrong in my life. I hid you beneath layer after layer of socially acceptable uniforms and soon forgot you exsisted.

I became obsessed with other things, small and simple to large and complicated. Obsessed with controlling my overindulgence and drowning in my own self-destruction. And there you lay, quiet and dormant, like the injured branch of a tree after the sting of winter.

I've seen my other branches grow. I've seen the birth of blossoms and the falling of leaves. I've seen the fruit of efforts fall to the ground and rot, and twigs snap off as I've reached upwards towards clouds passing by. But I forgot about you.

You were always there. Sturdy, strong and bare.

Then recently it happened. I'm not sure why exactly. I looked upon this limb and saw a speck of green poking out from beneath the skin. A small breeze came up and shook my leaves and I felt it to the tip of my roots.

I remembered.