“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.“

– Henry David Thoreau

Am I leading a life of quiet desperation?

“Here” is high school, and a certain individual.  Sometimes, like whenever this hits me, I yearn so much to go back in time and change the course of events.  Or at least change myself so I could have had a chance to change the course of events.  But, alas, here I sit,  relegated to merely reminiscing instead.  Like Eddie Money says, you can never go back.

Regular readers of this blog (is there such a thing?) should really be asking me to have my head checked.  How much self-inflicted punishment, you might ask, am I willing to put myself through?  Is it punishment?  Or is it a way to assuage the guilt (?) I obviously have over this.  I only see two options:  1) forget about it entirely, which would obviously lead to forgetting about many other good things from that period, or 2)  deal with it in a less-soulful, less-anguished, manner.  Neither of which are all that possible.  So, I just remain thankful that I can, for the most part, keep my car off this road most of the time.  It’s kind of like a dead-end road, in a literal and a non-literal sense.

In the same vein of going back (or not), this is probably the number one song that I connected to this person when it came out.  Oh yes, it was very intense (and very one-sided!).

So, anyways, thanks for riding along on this detour.  I know this post isn’t very eloquent and hastily put together (too much multi-tasking going on here), so sorry.

UPDATE:  Well, thankfully, that was short-lived.  I’m back out of that hole today, so onward to new challenges (and struggles).

For example, when I was a kid (elementary-school age) my parents went somewhat regularly to a restaurant nearby. I recall that restaurant being a very large, almost cavernous place. I recently had the opportunity to revisit that restaurant and was surprised at how incredibly small it looked inside. Not huge, not cavernous; just very average-sized, at best. Age and our memories can play cruel tricks on us that way. Do our brains shrink, or do just our memories?

So, the reason I bring this up is because I had the interesting experience of visiting my high school this past weekend for the first time since I graduated (a looooong time ago). My high school was, and still is, huge. At one time, I recall, it was the largest school (student-wise, at about 4,000 students ) in the state of Virginia. Physically it s a very large building. At the time I attended school there, it was huge. I recall it being just so massive.

This past weekend I was in the neighborhood and, on a whim, decided to drive by. I have driven through that neighborhood on a few occasions since I graduated, so seeing it from the outside again was not a new experience. From the outside, it hasn’t changed much — there had been some minor modifications, but nothing that altered it significantly in size and shape.

When driving by this particular weekend however, I saw that the front door was open and people were steadily streaming in and out of it.  Seeing a golden opportunity, I shut off the car and thought “I wonder if I can sneak inside and take a look around?” I HAD to see what it looked like inside, to see what it looked like inside and see if my memory matched reality.  With all the people coming and going, I figured it would be easy to look conspicuous if I were to wander in.

So I went in…

I had a couple guys I was pretty good friends with during high school but, even though we were good friends, we fell out of touch quickly.  One guy (Tom) I wrote to occasionally for a year or so, but the other two I don’t recall communicating with at all after high school.

About a year ago, I reconnected (somewhat superficially) with Tom via one of those high school classmates sites.  He work was going to bring him back to this area for a week and wanted to get together.  Unfortunately, due to several factors, we never actually connected when he was in town last year.

A few months ago, Tom emailed me again and said he would be in this area for a week this month and said again that he wanted to catch up, to which I replied enthusiastically.  In light of his upcoming visit, I did a FB search for the other guys, and found them both.  I emailed one of them (Sam) as I knew him a little better, and he got in touch with Tim.

So this is great — it’s all coming together.  The four of us will get together after all these years!  I was looking forward to hearing everything they’d been up to in the ensuing time, what they were doing now, and just rehashing some old stories.  I was really looking forward to it.

We met at a bar/restaurant in the area.  I was the last one in and, to be honest, walked by them without recognizing them.  I was at the bar ordering a beer when Sam comes up and says hi, which made me realize how much they had changed .  So we all got a beer and found a table.

Unfortunately, it kind of was disappointing from that point forth.  We found out that Tom worked for the CDC, as a public health inspector, and now for the USDA.  So, unfortunately, the rest of the evening we got to listen to Tom tell us stories about slaughterhouses and salmonella.

Sam made a couple attempts to inquire about what I had been up to, but it was honestly difficult to get a word in edgewise with Tom’s stories about the public health sector.  Oddly, neither he nor Tim seemed really interested in catching up.  So, I mostly sat and feigned interest, as learning about slaughterhouses, rat dung content in our foods, and other assorted facts along those lines didn’t really interest me.

Since Sam and Tim are local, I would be interested in getting together with them again and really catching up…

Note:  names changed to protect privacy, but they all really do have three letter names .

In each case, I initiated contact with them with a short, but friendly, email saying “hi” and asked if they remembered me.  In all cases, I got a reply; the two guys I knew wrote back with a nice note and filled me in on their lives and recalled some things we experienced in high school.  The third reply was nice, short, and not very personal.

I sent a longer reply back to each of them; the two guys I filled in on what I had been up to in the ensuing years, and to the other person I just sent another short note with another detail or two, but not much else.  After my second note to each of them, I received…..nothing.  Not a peep; not a word.  Silence.

This has me wondering, did I break some email etiquette that people who haven’t conversed in decades shouldn’t break?  Did I incorrectly expect a second reply from each person?  Did I assume too much?  Was I lucky to get any reply at all?

Not sure what this means; did I expect too much, or did they drop the ball?  I mentioned this to a friend of mine and they said it was kind of like they just left the room mid-conversation.    That’s exactly what it felt like.  Kind of rude, in my opinion.

Has this ever happened to you?

Yet, the reality is that those experiences all do end, and then you’re left with the distant memories and a yearning to go back, which cannot happen. The important thing to remember about such events in our life is not to dwell on it’s passing and mourn the memories fading in the rear view mirror. Instead, what we need to remember is that while the experience itself has passed, we need to remember the gift that the experience produced. If we look back on remorse and devalue the experience because it did not last forever or bring us to where we wanted to end up, we will indeed miss the gift of that experience. A day is no less glorious because it gives way to night; a meal no less delicious because you grow hungry again; or a glowing career no less contributory because you retire. Rather than deny our shining moments because they yield to the mundane, glorify them because they eclipse  mediocrity. Savor them as precious gifts that will warm your soul forever.

Experiences are temporary, but the spirit that animates them lasts forever.

I have always always always loved the sound of an steel-string acoustic guitar. To me, it produces one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.  I have attempted to learn to play the acoustic guitar, and have even made a couple (some  of nefarious quality), in my love affair with them and their sound.

If there was one person I would most want to emulate in terms of playing, it would be William Ackerman.  His music, which is all instrumental, speaks to me more than almost any other music I’ve heard. While I realize I will never ever be able to play half as well as he does, he is an inspiration to me.

The song is titled The Bricklayer’s Beautiful Daughter.  Enjoy…