Faint Damnation

After flailing around last week for over an hour trying to synch Netflix with my antiquated Mac, I finally caved and downloaded a movie from iTunes.

Screw all the interesting choices that could've been, I thought, let's just go Hollywood and cocoon myself in mind-numbingly mainstream cinema.

I then downloaded "Constantine" with Keanu Reeves.

(pause)

What's that you say? Pay money to watch Keanu act? I know, I know. But in truth...

I liked it.

Yeah, yeah, I know what my father's going to say, and no, Dad, there aren't any pods in my basement, the moonies haven't gotten me and I haven't drunk any kool-aid. Okay?

True, Keanu's style is generally stilted - with flat, affected line delivery and physical movement better suited to a cardboard cutout (I don't think his head turns, for instance, independent of his shoulders) however... in the case of a comic book adaptation?

Flame On!*

Or should I say, "ex-cellent!"?

Left handed compliment? Maybe so.

But as my very own father has been known to say "less is more;" and while Keanu's skill set may be lacking... there are times when it simply plays.

Uh, "Point Break" for instance. And maybe you've heard of a little move called... "The Matrix"?

'Course he doesn't get many lines in the latter, but he sure can bend a spoon! Meanwhile...

And yeah, it's true I purchased this movie and have now watched it 32 times in a row - can quote it in my sleep - and have attained enlightenment in regards to all things Keanu... Keanu... Keanu...

What? Hunh!?

It's as if I've awakened from some horrible nightmare only to remember that...

Oh, yeah.

"Constantine" with Keanu Reeves.

See it.

(pause)

Unless you're my dad.

Then not.

*And no, this is not a gay reference**, it's from the Fantastic Four. "Flame On!" is the command Johnny Storm would use to transform into the Human Torch. Duh.
**On the other hand they did all wear powder-blue spandex and were consistently "fantastic!" Hmmm.

Untended

Thoughts like fallen leaves,

dried up and skittering
over concrete and slumbering brown earth,

crackling
with chitinous distinction
under foot,

amassing
into great whooshing piles,
stirred by winds and ardent striding

(deeper meanings
hinted at within
insistent susurrus),

accumulate
round tree trunks
and then,

untended,
trodden,
and rained upon,
become

a glistening wet chrysalis?

-Or-

wet brown sludge
to be scraped off the lawn
like excrement from the bottom of shoe.

You decide.

Satori Memo

Listening to Fat Boy's Gangsta Trippin'* as I write - a classic groove that puts some pep into this old man's step on a rain sodden day such as this.

Did I say old man? Well...

Chronologically speaking, I'm 44, which has it's own connotations, depending on who you are and where you've been.

But the underlying truth is:

I am neither old nor young, but, like everything else under the sun and stars, my little bits swept apart and continually re-shaped by the ethereal and howling winds, am timeless.**

My knees, on the other hand? Did not get the memo.

And a crackily crunch to you Mr. Knees! Is that a good morning I hear?

*Have also been dipping into the blues again lately, including Mr. Mississippi Fred MacDowell, "I do not play no rock and roll" and John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom" and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, etc." And if you haven't heard the last, done as an ode to recovery, you really should. Highly entertaining.
**All disclaimers by my curmudgeonly progenitor aside!

On the Fade

I feel as if I'm running out of second chances.

As if all my choices have led up to this moment and there’s no going back.

Remember that scene in “No Country for Old Men” when Javier Bardem flips a coin to decide the fate of his victim?

He says something like that, how the coin is only the instrument of - not chance - but fate, of inevitability. How previous choices have led to that moment, as surely as a mathematical equation produces its answer.

This may sound cryptic or even cynical, but there is an upside.

If I am running out of time, out of choices, what moment could be more important than

this?