WHAT IT IS
They looked like members of the same sports team, uniforms clean and distinct, helmets affixed and identical as they executed complex plays on the field with precise interactions and decided purpose. There was no time for the hoopla that constructs the shrine for the headliner and there was certainly no time to tease out nibbles of wisdom on subjects that towered up to the windows of practising philosophers, busy plumbers, rehabilitated dock workers or academics looking for reason, but finding the jars sometimes empty. They played ball, sang songs, and wrote books but it was not their place to fill the chambers of desire with the knowledge of science or the science of certainty but instead they paddled in their own murky waters and presented it as human insight and indelible truth. Undaunted, customers placed these perils of wisdom in there own attitudes, adapted them as their own and dispensed them like pollen in the month of May. Questions too thick, examinations too broad or statements too deep were not allowed. The grist poured out of the taps of social media and piled upon the mezzanine, allowing most to play with it, some to ignore it and a few others to wonder where all this advice come from and why it weighed so much. As cumbersome as all this is, what of the coaches, investors and owners who take the team out of the arena and stuff them into closets of mesmerization where gems of lifestyle are set out in a fashion, so the picking and choosing are made easier. It is a confused mash-up of truth, lies and be-as-I-am’s, but in its own way and in its own time, this may be the only thing left floating around in the either.
It was Adnan who started naming the white crown sparrows. Ruth scratched the ground relentlessly, Aaron found plenty to eat, Robinson was quick on his feet, Greinke used his wings more than most, DiMaggio…Slim’s booming voice startled Adnan and Hobbson from their little game when he returned and told them their piece of Missouri paradise was just down the road.
WHAT IT IS NOT
On a privately owned left handed dirt track some eight and a half furlongs long, just outside of Greensburg Indiana, Miles Hobbson sat on a rickety fold out chair, his fingers feeling around deep inside a canvas bag filled with raisins and dates from his native island of Nevis, given to him by his old friend Aquena. The two horses in front of him relished in his offerings, as did a small flock of white crowns that scurried around his chair. It was Miles’ intention to ride these horses into dark reaches, rip out what little light he could find then exile these wastelands to the asteroids between Mizar and Myrtle Beach. But the human psyche was silly putty and Hobbson could not get a decent grip as what made the clock tick, let alone predict an accurate time. Dodging the fantasy of cause and cure, ignoring fact, and embracing fiction, Hobbson stood as a testament to the hopeful, seeing himself as a child soldier prepared to slay the idea of hopeless, as adult children often do. His optimism lapped the shoreline in the endless pursuit of the perfection that was his world, not a world he occupied or a world he was familiar with, but rather a retreat from rancor who’s steel sword now lay rusting down the shoreline from Myrtle Beach or some other such place. Adrift on this earth, Hobbson was well aware of the conflicts and harmonies and the unwillingness to solve the simple and caress the complex as a show of the difficulties our society faces and our abilities to do little about them.
Essentially a stiff, Hobbson needed to parlay a strength into a weakness and to that end these two horses in front of him, in the hands of the right person, could turn copper into gold, wealth into substance, hostility into euphoria. He reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of raisins and dates, treats like no one on earth had seen before.
WHAT IT IS/WHAT IT IS NOT 