Fin

I won't mind being strange, if it has a happy ending. I'm spending some time around normal people, and it's, well, very strange. I've never been around normal people. It's making it clear to me what a trainwreck my life has always been. I wasn't a normal father, but I was very good. Very successful. It was an act of will, combined with love. I held it together until my son graduated, and then it fell apart, coincidentally, we'll say, precisely at the time he went into the military. Lucky thing.

I won't be telling my life story. It's a tragedy. The fate that overtakes a man because of the flaws in his character. Bad choices have mounted up to overwhelm me by now, and I cannot see a way out. That sounds dire, but that's not how I mean it. I'm just destructive, in my quiet way. A vandal, defacing my life.

Tonight we had a tough workout that left us unsatisfied. For me, it was being face to face with so many different kinds of weakness. Not only is the flesh weak, but the spirit is too. We can't do more than can be done. But more could have been done. It's attitude. Character and courage, mental strength -- these are developed the same as physical strength is. It just seems that the resolve to improve gets lost with the passage of not very much time. The fire goes out. Another morning, and weakness is renewed.

Same with bjj. I'm so sick of the limits of my flesh. They are surpassed only by emotions that freeze me from the inside out.

This is what art is. The attempt to capture truth in a moment. I am my own canvas. This is my blue period. It is my life's work. It's not enough. It will be forgotten. Vandalized, then ignored, then forgotten. No matter. It was unimportant.


J