Since it's "Reset Saturday" I feel compelled, once again, to go back into time and refresh the details of our purpose for anyone that is new to the game or has forgotten why on earth we're here. Not to be confused with why we're here on earth, perhaps that's next year's "blog" initiative.
On December 14th, 2012 I intended to post a Facebook contest to pick a suitable New Year's Resolution for the coming year. I had it all thought out and was ready to roll out the exciting details.
Unfortunately, horrific events were unfolding at an elementary school in a quiet northeastern town which took the lives of six staff members and twenty children.
Needless to say, an entertaining, self-serving contest hardly seemed appropriate. For the coming days Facebook was flooded with gun rights arguments and memorial posts as a nation mourned for the poor souls and their grieving families.
We were angry, confused and wanted answers and solutions where none were easily found. Pointing fingers at the government, the media and even each other, the only real key to the puzzle was within the mind of a madman, who ultimately turned a gun on himself to end his own suffering. We'll likely never find the answers we seek and even if we do those innocent lives from that terrible day in Sandy Hook are never coming back.
Suffice to say, time swirled on and I picked my moment to post the "Pick My New Year's Resolution" contest on Facebook, which still seemed too soon as it competed for relevance within the currents of dark matter.
This contest, and subsequently this blog, will be forever tied to that frightening event in my mind. Scars serve as reminders of our mortality and provide evidence that we are truly vulnerable.
In full disclosure, reoccurring bleak themes of our brief existence is no accident. Although there are many reoccurring themes and story lines, they're all paths that lead to one place, I can assure you. The games and time travel and zombie encounters and multiple personality disorders and cycles and patterns and routines and escape plans...all of them are on a collision course with December 31st. A mere one-hundred and fifteen days away.
When I created the contest I had absolutely no clue how this would all unfold. There were some terrific suggestions via Facebook replies within the original thread and there were many. It seemed that everyone needed a viable distraction from cold reality. After going back and reading the original thread (found in the link below), I now find that I have followed through on many of the suggested resolutions...learning to dance the Flamenco notwithstanding...above all else, my promise to update my daily Jazz Hands deployments has been strictly adhered to, which in and of itself is more of a self-fulfilling need to write every day. This is not for you, in other words (no pun intended).
I can assure that I do, in fact, jazz my hands daily, as promised...and sometimes I write about those deployments, and sometimes I write about other things and do what I can to relate them back to hand jazzing, and sometimes that connection is very loose. At times I may go off on a several day tangent thread that does not have a whole heck of a lot to do with flopping my arms and wiggling my hands, but the words contained herein are meant to symbolize the Royal Jazz Hands, which is a state of mind, not a physical act. Some people are "Hand Jazzing on the Inside" sort of characters, and that's okay. It's the spirit that counts most.
As we approach our end game, it seems that the plunge off of the deep end becomes more and more inevitable, if that hasn't already occurred. I have no intention of playing safe and though I contend that every word that I write in these blogs are "TRUE" at times should not be taken literally. I believe in zombies and time travel and dogs that talk, yes. I believe that salt is the key to salvation and that it is the necessary fuel for stepping into the future or past, yes. I believe that time travel in and of itself is tricky, confounding, and completely paradoxical and I also believe that there are many sides to each and every one of us...usually three sides, and that our alter egos do not always have our back. I believe that fiction imitates life, but also believe that life imitates fiction just as much and sometimes the distinction between the two is fuzzy at best.
And since it's "Confession Saturday", I will admit that I almost never know what words will be typed in this vast white space when I wake each morning. There is no outline. There is no fate to this storyline. Like life, there are uncountable paths to the finish and all but one will be written...only my fingers can determine what those characters will ultimately display.
It took me two-hundred and fifty days to say this, but all of these posts from day one to day three-hundred and sixty-five are dedicated to those six faculty members and those twenty children that lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary. To be abundantly clear, this blog has nothing specific to do with the events that unfolded on the fourteenth day of December of 2012, but the deep scar that we all carry with us from that day are a constant influence on what words my fingers decide to write.
This sort of full disclosure seems more of a postscript type of thing or even fine for a Day 365 swan song...but I can't promise that the opportunity will present itself to wrap this thing up in a big bow at that point in time. So today, day two-hundred and fifty, you get my epilogue. I could have saved this post for December 14th, but that day will truly belong to the twenty-six innocent that perished...and like that day last year, I will refrain from contesting with their rightful space.
Today's Jazz Hands are for twenty new stars shining down upon us from the heavens.
Day two-hundred and fifty complete.
No comments:
Post a Comment