The Eve of the Third Sunday
Ok, so the title is about football.
It’s about the Patriots.
It’s about the playoffs.
And, fundamentally, it’s about winning.
Bill Simmons talked about how the Patriots had become the Yankees of football. Bill, it happened a long time ago. After the night of anticipating the end in 2004 (where I left Jake Ivory’s to go home and watch a disaster movie in complete darkness), Howie Long made the connection. Howie Long knew it. We all knew it. We all though the Yankees had it that year, but they let their guard down. What Howie thought, though, was that in the NFL the Patriots had it.
It is a remarkable time to be living in New England.
It is a remarkable time to be a Patriots fan. One must do their best to truly understand and appreciate what it means. They must truly appreciate what we’re observing. It’s quite a feeling.
Whaterver happens tommorrow, I’ll be appreciative.
Make no mistake of it, I want them to win.
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I cooked for the first time in a while tonight. A pork roast, some low carb cauliflower mash and wine. All good. There is something about the act of cooking which makes a person feel alive. When you can conjure a meal from flesh and vegetables you can sustain life. You can make people feel welcome and warm. You can survive.
Life, though, shouldn’t only be about survival. It should be about the future.
Looking into the future, creating, inventing, imagining for the future.
We’re suppsed to envision and predict. Yet, we do so looking back at the past.
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I was listening to a Tom Waits album tonight. When it finished, Slant 6 Mind by Greg Brown was on. My roommate asked me what year it was from. I knew a ballpark but nothing specific. Upon typing the title into The Google, I found it was 1998. That very moment I felt old. Though I was old, I felt knowledgable and traveled. The album is an old photograph that you look at to stir memories. And, while evoking such smotion, it also asks you “Do you fully understand me now?”
I’m big enough to realize that in 1998 I didn’t fully understand the emotions the depth and breadth. I made my own attributions.
Now, I know more. And, now now I have concluded I am old.
Refute it if you will (and some will) but I am old. Or, perhaps I’m wizened.
“Spring and what’s left of the hippies return from old rooming houses and Mexico.
More letters, more journals, more poems to burn; Real heat at last.
At last my words glow.”- “Spring and All,” Slant 6 Mind, Greg Brown
