Thank You, Susan Boyle

Sung to the tune of I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables. (Sorry for the extra verse.)

I dreamed a dream of future clear,
Of boyhood plans and vague ambitions.
This thing that I would call “career,”
With cowboy hats and lunar missions.

But then there came the bills to pay,
And dreams were something one did sleeping.
My goals for life I’d put away
Deep in my brain, for safer keeping.

My harshest critics roll their eyes,
Betraying lowered expectation.
And so it comes as no surprise
That I would join in their negation.

The life that I have been denied,
I see so many others living.
Times I thought I’m satisfied
I can count upon one hand.

But then this woman, near my age,
Without a job, with modest dressing,
She sings a song, and she’s the rage,
The night she shows the world her blessing.

On hearing this, the time has come
To face that I’m my only critic.
I must cheer for my own team
Before I kill
The dream I dreamed.

Lest you haven’t yet seen the video, here’s a link. (They’ve disabled embedding.)

I’m Not Afraid of a Colonoscopy (Nor Should You Be)

I couldn’t help using the “Finish This Tweet” meme to my own advantage. What I spent the better part of two days not being afraid of — as best I could — was a colonoscopy. Before you ask, it was routine; the occasion was my 50th birthday, put off until after my 51st but not before my health care coverage ended from my cubicle job I quit two weeks ago.

I owed you an explanation today. I’d like to expand the idea of this post to dealing with fear of the unknown, especially of your insides when you get to a certain age, and why it’s worth fighting through. I’d also love to revisit the whole idea of this fun Twitter game, which was wildly successful for me this time, and benefited only a little from an implied imprimatur from Laura Fitton (see previous post).

The fact is, I’m still a little out of it from the anaesthesia. (Not so much that I couldn’t spell anaesthesia!)

Nighty-night.

A photo after the break…

Addicted to Heroines?

Can a guy have a knight in shining armor? I think I’ve had two.

I sat in the car, waiting for everyone else to show up and unlock the door to the law firm office. On the radio, Colin Powell was making the case for WMDs to a UN committee, pointing to photos that reminded my mind’s eye of the visual displays of Dr. Strangelove. There was a battle of a different kind brewing this morning: I was about to be deposed pursuant to a lawsuit.

When the summons came in the mail a few months prior, it was this bulky stack of double-space type. In my ignorance, I reacted like it was an invoice for a million dollars. I freaked out.

Five years before that, I caused a car accident that supposedly injured the driver of the other car. He didn’t seem injured to me that day.

Dorn

Dorn, just north of Moreton-in-Marsh, England (lat. 52.004°, long. -1.702°)

The moon shone at just the right angle and intensity and painfully tart gray-blue. It was the middle of the night, the sun as distant as it could be from this scene. My view out the front window of this bedroom where my wife Denise and I took our rest was through a freshly-washed modern glass. The building, however, was about 150 years old. A recent construction, in these parts.

This was England, 1997, a mere two weeks after a Princess of theirs died in a car crash in France. It was hard to picture such a glamorous globe-hopper as Diana ever setting foot in the Cotswolds town of Moreton-in-Marsh, on the northern fringe of which sat this bed-and-breakfast, shielding us from gentle October winds. On the map, it was tantalizingly close to a dot, a place-name, not even a town, but an intersection of two mysteriously tiny roads. Dorn, the dot said.