There are many things I thought would happen when I was young and foolish and sure of life and not one did.
I was going to be a great physicist who’d dive into the depths of the universe. I’d put Einstein Newton to shame.
I was going have a family and be the father I never had.
I was going to tell a tale of impeccable beauty and wonder and change the world with my words.
Most people forget about these things when they graduate from college and experience the real world. Somehow I forgot about that and kept those silly notions hidden in my heart.
Once I experienced loss, deep unimaginable loss, and was inadvertently freed from myself, I found another path that I’d forgotten a fascination of until this past year. Movies, stories, photography, imagery, combined to make something much more powerful than any word could be.
I pondered these notions, in lesser form, when I was 10 and sick and desperate for more while laying on the couch watching I Dream of Jeanie in the afternoon coughing up giant chunks of lung. I had a camera then but I didn’t know I loved it. I had a storyteller’s heart but no one mentioned it to me. I got lost in a tale I told myself and spent two decades wandering in the forest until a friend inadvertently pulled me back onto the path.
How curious is the universe that some random stranger who just happened to see a word or two you wrote nearly a decade ago could have such a nuclear weapon like impact on your life?
His interest rekindled my interest in film. And now I’m reading Panavision manuals in preparation for a camera assistant gig on a feature being shot in Tucson. A woman he loved broke my heart and inadvertently freed me from myself. Not that it makes sense but that’s how it played out.
Life is crazy that is sure. All people tell that tale so it must be true.
Now I listen to the music the French Shaman gave me, and a look at the photos I took of the silly zombie movie I helped shoot Sunday, and my path is unclear and more certain than it has ever been and still completely befuddling.
I owe a debt that can never be repaid to a withering man who did nothing other than say hello and offer a wayward traveler a dinner who introduced me to a woman who introduced me to a cat, all of whom added up to a kind of key.
It’s very odd that such a twisted path over 20 years has lead to this place where I’m back at age 10 pondering visual tales of silly delight.
Life is crazy that is for sure.
BUT, you’re not done yet. There’s still time to do, to be. Especially the family part. You never know when you will be gifted. When it was not at all possible, when I was too old, when I lost all my family and was truly alone in the world, wonder of wonders, someone loved me and, miracle of miracles, a child came to us. And we are a family. Not your picture perfect kind, by any means, but MY family, nonetheless. And I am grateful to have them.
Scottch…never give up, never surrender.
And I can vouch that life is crazy, that is for sure.
Now I understand your divorce from Catholicism better. Fatherhood is the connection. Mothers are great at guilt Catholicism- but it’s fathers that teach us how to *be* Catholic. A Catholic who doesn’t have a good father, is cut off from the religion in a way I never could be. A father who is Catholic and didn’t have a father of his own will have some severe problems- he never learned to be a Catholic Father, so how can he be a Catholic Father to his children?