The Enormous View.
The future looked so big then and the past looks so big now. Did I
like it better when I was looking into the abyss in front of me or now,
when most of my career is behind me? "Massive" is the word that I'm
looking for perhaps-the weight of those seven letters crushes you. "Mass"-the
force of it all and "ive" -most of "live." Suppose I'd been a college
professor-a lawyer-a doctor.
The possibilities were all out there and I chose to be an artful dodger
of ads, trying to get people to listen to my pitches, trying to keep
the snakes from biting me to death, trying to collect bills and trying
to be honest. Is there a sense of accomplishment in any of it? By what
yardstick are any of us measured and does it matter that we even try
to put our topknot under the ruler? Who the heck should it matter to?
Linda? Linda loves me the way I am. My parents? Cripes, the amount of
money we have in the bank staggers them. Anybody else?
Guess this is what started me down this path--talked to two of my mentors
yesterday and today. One of them has had his second kidney failure and
is going back on dialysis. (The chances of them giving a 70-year old
man another one are pretty slim.) The other one is starting to lose
it. I'd say things and it was obvious the words weren't reaching him.
Darn, I have been wanting to take him to lunch for so long and now I
don't know if it would be any fun for him at all. Took me back thirty
years to visit with those guys. God, I miss my youth. The sense of the
possible. When I'd stare out that south Austin window at the downtown
skyline and dream about what I was going to become. How I'd be able
to walk with the big boys and be one of them. That's what I need to
seize now. But am I going to dry up and fade away? Hell no. I've taken
the best body shots that Michael Dell and everybody else could dish
out and rose up off the mat to fight again.
What I need is another creative outlet and maybe this film thing is
it. OK, let's give it a shot. Maybe the best play on "massive" means
getting behind the force rather than letting it crush you.