Awaydays

And now for something completely different...  it can't always be sex, drugs and rock n' roll around these parts, as much as we'd like it to be the sheer fact is that our time spent on this third stone from the sun is filled with many ordinary extraordinary days, of course there is a vast majority of the human race that feels as if it should always doing and social media documenting and planning and looking forward to what comes next and never stops to take a look around or appreciate exactly where they're at (see Ferris Bueller, Alan Watts etal) , i'd say it's a crisis but most people are too busy to worry about what some shut-in stoner has to say about their meta-physical well being, they don't give a fuck about their meta-physical well being, they put the money and the plate and hope the good Reverend isn't full of shit,  another example of not paying attention to where they are but worried about where they're gonna be...

I'll be the first to admit i don't know much about parenting, in fact i'm quite sure i fuck up on a damn near hourly basis but i do try, (stop fucking laughing), i often try to explain to the boyos that their old man is full of shit and to think for themselves and question everything around them and take an active view of their surroundings even if that means taking it from a hammock strung between two palm trees while sipping a tasty beverage, fucking live, it's pretty simple, enjoy those little things cuz they will mean more to you in the end than all the BMWs and golf clubs ever will... and for the record i could give fuck all about cars and golf...

Around this time last year the I-mac tried out for club football (soccer) and made the top team for his age group, he's tall and skinny like his old man was and runs like a gazelle, one of the great joys of my existence is watching the boyos play, usually footie or basketball, they're both good athletes pulling from a state-placing gymnast momma and a dad who went to university on an athletic scholarship for basketball, until of course he chucked it in for drinking, drugs, art and poetry, quite possibly one of the smartest moves he ever made, now this foray into club footie was new to me and what i soon discovered is that there's a fair amount of travel and time and there are certain parts of it (mainly dealing with other adults/parents/coaching types but mainly fucking parents) that suck a big, stinking, dong but that those things are far outweighed by the time i get to spend with the boyos... and some of those times i call awaydays...

I'm roughly 7 inches taller than my old man and i remember him telling me that i was a better basketball player by the time i was 12 than he'd ever been, my old man is a gem, he didn't live vicariously through his son, he let me play and fuck up on my own and succeed on my own and i do my best to emulate him and stay out of the boyos way, i also know that watching them play is one of my favorite things on this planet to do... the club footie has these days where the team will play a couple games against competition from other states, it usually involves a two hour drive or so and it's these days that i've come to love, usually it's just me and the I- mac but on the last one Nick Disaster came along as well... we roll along the interstates listening to music and talking about all kinds of things, we discuss and debate and tell stories and daydream out car windows, i get glimpses into how they think and who they'll be, i know these days are finite and rare, it's the most fascinating stuff in the world to me, i'm sure it is to most people who actually take an interest in their offspring, i also know some people don't take that interest, i'd call those people fucking idiots...

And so on this last one we traveled up to the lovely shores of Lake Erie, in the town of the same name, we played a couple games and then went to an indoor water park, we rode water slides and went in a wave pool, we ate burgers and fries and drank Coke, it was an ordinary extraordinary day, and as we left for two hour drive back i watched them climb in the back seat and each curl up, headphones on gazing out the window, i turned on some of my favorite music and headed towards the interstate, by the time i had gone 10 miles Nick Disaster was passed out,  the I-mac hung on a little longer but by 20 miles in he was sleeping too, before he fell asleep he caught me looking at him in the rear view mirror, he gave me a smile and closed his eyes... the most beautiful things can never be bought, they usually just happen, it's why we need to pay attention, the extraordinary ordinary... i love the awaydays...

(Somewhere on the lounge there was a live version of this song in Iceland with Anything More, when the boyos were young and i would give them their bottle and put them to bed i used to sing this song to them, sometimes i'd sing it to them at after that 4am bottle, my neighborhood asleep, it'd be my hoarse whispering of the lyrics and the subtle creak of the floorboards, the things that i will keep...)