100

To start where I began, to begin where I started, would only be fitting - this being the 100th episode of my life - but life isn’t linear, lines only cross, they don’t connect. A century worths of blogs. A hundred years of lines and bad grammar, grammar being bad just to be bad, to defy those who taught me good grammar, those who gave me C’s on my poetry portfolio:

To you red bearded teacher
to you i tip my hat
I wink my eye
left than right, then left again
you almost won, ran victorious
vanquished my honor
drown my fire
stole my desire
but alas, oh red bearded teacher
those they call Paul
Paul Willis
though you might have a Dr.
set before your name
have you ever wrote 100 blogs
red bearded teacher who reads from the bleachers and beckons to all to become like him
writing poems as bad as sin.

On the 100th anniversary of my blog, a day most should overlook and forget, I have chosen to not talk about my fear of cancer coupled with zero health insurance, fear that might give me ulcers along with the chemo, I will not talk about that or about the sheer insanity of those who read this blog, but I will talk about how beautiful DC is at night.

***

Walk up the steps that Abe Lincoln built - white, marble, maybe not marble but close enough, granite perhaps - and look at him. I dare you to try not to be proud. Proud of what? It doesn’t matter. I am proud to be alive, standing in front of Abe, glowing in white, sitting in defiance, looking out towards the pool that Forest ran in, Jenny his love on the other side, Jenny his love within his grasp. Sit on the steps like the Wedding Crashers did, drink till you are merry just as they would. All the little kids from Tennessee and ALaBAaaaMA giggle and laugh at their funny teachers, all of them - the kids and teachers alike - wearing the same shirt, all of them missing the moment. The moment is happening, the beauty of DC, but they are missing it, they are looking at Abe while Abe watches it happen. He watches it every night from his glowing chair, his throne of stone, he watches as I do. We watch the water become still, the pool falls silent, the birds stop diving, the ducks stop swimming, the earth stops revolving, and for a moment, just one moment, the Washington Monument, tall, white, glowing like Abe, reflects perfeclty in the black water below. A mirror. A watery, black, beautiful mirror. Someone might take a picture, someone might say how amazing it is, look mom! it is so cool! but they will miss it, because they are talking, because they are moving, they are blinking, they are breathing. Be still I tell them from within my head, be still and watch, as the moment becomes minutes, then hours, then days, then bliss. Watch. Pay attention. The air is so warm, the clouds so gray against the black night, just watch, just listen, cars people kids planes can you hear it die down, can you hear it become still, just as the water now lays, holding Washington in it’s lazy arms, wrapping it’s glowing white sides with warm darkness, a perfect frame for a perfect picture. Then a rock is thrown and the mirror is gone, it ripples into oblivion. Then you get up and walk through the dark green trees, the path that looks over the Vietnam Wall, thousands upon thousands of names that just shared that moment with us. The wind blows and you are in your car. The moment is gone. Pay attention or you will miss the best part of DC.

Thanks to those who have read with me.

~ by kevinthomas on May 31, 2006.