...on these days

...and on those

I've been out walking
I don't do too much talking
These days

almost like magic, nico came through the speakers to tell me about these days and it got me to really think about the events of this evening. you see a small piece of my past died this weekend. more like the grand father of a piece of the bastard's past died this weekend. i knew him from the ball field. there was a time, a long time ago in which the bastard loved the game and i played the game and i realized that i sucked at the game (thus loving it a little less) so i became an umpire. when speaking with her sister, i remembered that i sucked at that as well (thus loving it a little bit lesser) but it paid well when i was a teenager so i didn't mind getting paid for something i wasn't good at. what did i care? but what i really forgot was how much time i spent there when i was young. how much time i walked around there, filthy from the dirt, shinguards sweated to my legs, trying to get the time of day from this girl and having a decent time of it and how these people are all older now. and how so much of this has been asleep in me.

i haven't thought about the field. the smell of the grass. the taste of dirt. running circles around the field in the 5th inning when i really just wanted to throttle sidney daley because he argued every call of mine when i did his games and how he was the first grown man i argued with (shouting at the top of my lungs), who i told to get off of "my" field (not the first person i threw off the field though) and how his son enrique nearly snapped my neck under the bleachers when i started a fight with him (i never "was" all that good at fighting back then. still ain't).

i hadn't seen vanderveer in a long long time except in pictures of her and her husband and their lovely children. a storyline that went in a different direction and took on a life of it's own elsewhere. my legs genuinely buckled when i got there. i usually do funerals well. i usually keep something esoteric in the back of my head to keep it centered. something like, "we created gods and judges because we were scared and afraid and we let them judge us and sentence us". thank you grant morrison. but, it went out the window. or maybe stayed on the outside of the door to the past a walked through to pay respect to a family i knew a long time ago tonight. maybe it's because i haven't seen these people in over 10 years, maybe closer to 15.

on the way out i said goodbye to her mom who treated me sweetly every time i came to the field. and she asked me about this thing the mofo and i have created. my legs got weak again. she asked me, "when my daughter told me you had this web thing i asked her to forward me the address. when i read the things you had wrote, you struck me as very angry." then she looked me square in the eye and asked me if this was the case and was everything alright, genuinely concerned. i was 17 years old again getting advice from someone i genuinely respected, and i didn't respect very much back then.

OK QUICK SIDEBAR: every now and then, the bastard gets a nod from people who read the bastard works, whether it's the mad russian, or robbo, or lobster, or the fan. sometimes annie would check in to tell me that jimmy3000 turned her onto a post because the bastard was in rare form but, it wasn't until that very moment that i realized that the rents have never read my vitriol and mrs. vanderveer asking me if i was okay led me to wonder what they would think if they knew what i was doing and if they did, would they look at me concerned and to the same.

so here i am all having a hard time standing and i have to look her back and i tell her, "it's not all like that, mrs, vanderveer. alot of it is mostly schtick". i felt like a bullshitter. because while it is schtick, it also isn't. not all the time. it wouldn't be a living breathing thing if it was all fiction. i also felt kind of like a magician who can't really tell you the secret of his magic tricks. but i also didn't want mrs. vanderveer to see me tonight, 15 years down the pipe reading what she's read and going home knowing that i am in fact unhappy with how it's all turned out. because i'm not unhappy with it. sure i have my days when i'll lock myself in my bosses office until the shaking wears off but, most of the time, it's all big strides and theme music in my head all the way to and from. you can cover alot of distance with a good bass line in your head.

funerals are a funny thing, it's probably when you see folks you haven't seen in the longest the most. i've always hated that about them. i'd rather see these people at a ball game 20 years ago covered in dirt on a warm sunny day. maybe i'll head down there next weekend with the boy.

—the bastard