In The Beginning.
In the beginning, nothing seemed possible. There was just a clumsy, speck-like kid floating aimless in the bloodstream of the north country. Too nervous to speak up over the middle school cafeteria din, looking down at his reconstituted potatoes and wishing for some alien life force to beam him out of the White Mountains.
He spent most nights down in the basement, listening to the drone of the television. Daydreaming a future above and beyond his reach, he imagined three vague scenarios: in one he acquired a pitiful, brave illness; in another he made his home in a treehouse held up by telephone poles; and in the third he lived the sweet life of a black-and-white playboy, skimming the edge of the mediterranean with a Ferrari 250 GT California Spider. In envisioning a synthetic destiny, most of the details were intentionally glossed over. The first and last tool of surviving mediocrity is to wash it all away.
Reality was a strange and faceless fantasy until music came sauntering along. Shamelessly disheveled, music perched on the edge of the neighbor’s abandoned in-ground pool, smoked clove cigarettes and sang about sitting in a park in Paris, France, about panic on the streets of London, about wild horses, searching for a heart of gold and supernovas made out of champagne.
Even the cynical insomniac can sometimes see the light. Even speck-like kids come to life under the stars. Every single morning is a reawakening. Literally.
Despite all the grifters out on the shadowed streets, trying to ruin or rip off anyone with the blind will and stupidity to believe in themselves beyond reason — there is almost always another chance to wake up and sing one more beauteously exasperating, overemotional tune.
Etched into the plastic coating of an amaranthine Trapper Keeper: “So now you’d better stop, and rebuild all your ruins. For peace and trust can win the day, despite of all your losing.”
Valhalla, I am coming!