Month: February 2019

More and more I wonder maybe the Hokey Pokey really is what it’s all about.

All this shimmying around and wiggling about, all these funny steps, up and down and in and out and round about, and you have no idea where it’s going and maybe none of it means a damn thing. But it’s wacky, senseless fun when you just give in. Love the nutty thing. What else is there to do? May as well get in the circle and play. Maybe no one in that bouncing blob of bodies knows what they’re doing really, but it gets more fun the more people join in. Cast aside your aims, throw up your arms. Surrender to the silly, the absurd, the pointless. Just dance. No fixation for point. No idea what you’re doing there. Or why. Never mind the proper way. Or what you look like doing it. We all look ridiculous anyway. Strict motion looks all the more preposterous. You’ll end up tripping on your own feet. Or not having any fun, the most tragic loss of all. And vying to make sense of it all just ruins it. Who cares the reason you’re playing? Reasons never hold the clout they promise. Let go, let be. That is the only freedom.

And so, kiddies, I say put your left hip in. Spin and wiggle and shake it all about. Do it on skates. Do it with loose, far-flung, swinging moves. Swing out wildly. Put your whole self in. Put your whole self out. You do the Hokey Pokey and you shake yourself about. And when you stop to wonder how silly you look, what the hell it all means, when it’s gonna get you somewhere…you just turn yourself around. And that’s what it’s all about.

Drumming up dreams has been the juice of my life, and nothing gets my juices flowing more than the vast, green landscape of what may be someday.

Yet dreams are apt to turn wicked, swallow us whole and spit us out — if left unkempt, bare-boned and fleshless. It’s too easy to place another dream on a mantle of maybe-somedays, gathering dust until we have enough money or have enough time or have enough energy or have enough disgust with our own excuses and we’re finally ready to lasso one in, only to find we’ve missed our wagon to the pastures.

Somedays have a tendency to gel together until we can’t decipher one from the next; they get all clumped up and saggy, like a former beauty queen that let herself go. Untended to, they lose their shape, their playful charm, their bewitching powers to move men into action. Somedays aren’t pretty wrinkled and old, and we, who once would’ve given life and limb to acquire just one, eventually find we can’t stand to look at them anymore. Given enough time and dust particles, the nastiest few will grow a face and bellylaugh right at us. Not in a lighthearted, chuckling way. Somedays cackle. Progressively louder as they age. They taunt and nag with reminders of how much was promised them when first we fell in love. They love to do this just before bed.

My nights have been riddled with the haunts of Somedays past, those dusty old bones scuffling around the inside of my skull in a slow, demonic way. As the clock tisks its unforgiving tongue at me, and as the mercy of sleep creeps ever further, I flop around my bed in fits of desperation with each ghost summoned. An avalanche of Somedays rally together and pound at my heart, leaving little cracks in their wake. Another night lost to the vengeance of dreams done wrong.

Eventually, juices run dry. Dreams give up the ghost and simply fall asleep. Somedays age and grow bitter with time. Sooner or later they tire and fade. But bygone, they never do die.

However faint, a heart still beating promises life yet. Possibility hangs on ’til our very last breath. My dreams may be dusty, but damn it, I know they’re still alive.