Retired

The co-worker over the cubicle wall from me is leaving for the next couple of days to go hunting. Hunting, people. Yes, hunting. He is doing this, you know, over the course of a couple of days that coincide with the first rounds of the NCAA tournament. Coincide is the wrong word.  They don't occur at the same time. The NCAA tournament occurs. Everything else is a nuisance. An afterthought. A waste of time.

So imagine how much this co-worker of mine have in common. He's very in to guns and motorcycles and chit-chatty small talk. A true candidate for my new best friend.

The NCAA tournament. Yes, I will be taking the afternoons off, or just ditching work (and if that bothers you, figure out who my boss is and go tell him) to watch as many early round games as I can. I get less and less satisfaction out of filling out a bracket and following my success (or lack thereof) in calling upsets, but I still love the games. And I love basketball. Watching it now. Not playing it.

Because I am retired.

I don't play basketball any longer. It is a difficult thing to write, but it has been true for a couple years now.

[Picture about ten blank pages of space here with no writing, since that might come the closest to conveying the first part of my feelings on this matter.]

Yeah, I don't play. And I used to. Used to seek out any and every opportunity to play this game I loved. I still love it. But not playing it.

I was a pretty good player at my best. Not great, but pretty good for a skinny white kid with coke-bottle glasses and sore knees from Caldwell, Idaho, who never saw the floor as a member of the varsity team, which he only made as a senior. I got better in college and perhaps a little more finesse came to my game in my twenties. And I could still bring it in my thirties.

I mean check this out. As a twenty-one year old, I could do the following: Be standing still with the ball in my hands about six or eight feet from the basket. One strong dribble as I moved closer to the basket, and a leap off of both feet (harder that running and jumping off of one foot for most people) and I could rise, cock the ball back behind my head, and then bring it forward and dunk it forcefully with both hands. Pretty neat stuff if I say so, myself. I didn't know (I know there are plenty of people who can, I am just saying I didn't personally know them) a lot of people who looked like me who could do that.

I was a decent shot, from both inside and outside the three point line (although not as good as my son by the time he was 17, dad burn it), and I was quick, could get around people, drive to the basket. I could score. But I never played defense. Never. I got some blocked shots and steals, but it was never a priority. You can't score on defense, you know.

But all I have now are memories of good games I had, times I dominated the gym, gave referees attitude (a lot of that, actually), and the fun it was to play basketball. I don't do it anymore.

I am retired.

I Already Know This (Do You?)

Something happened when I watched Sense and Sensibility. I mentioned this. Something changed inside me. I felt something I had not felt before. Sounds like a cliche, but I believe it.

I have not been a person to share my feelings freely, and when I do, there is some misleading going on. I put on a front, act a part. It is ever-present in my dealings with other people. Ok, yes, I know, same with everyone. Fine. But I don't like people. I don't have close friends. I don't bond. I don't. Ask anyone. Seriously. You'll not find a person on the earth who will say, "Oh, yeah, Phyllis? Good, close friend of mine." No one feels that way about me and that's fine. I don't feel that way back.

It is probably because I don't feel like someone could know me, know all about me, I mean ALL, and still think, oh yeah, totally still want to be his friend. Sure, I hear it all the time from the same sources one would expect about how great I am and I shouldn't think that way about myself, blah blah blah. Every person knows themself the best. So they can be their own worst critic. Typical human failing. So some people are able to overcome it? Perfect. Congratulations.

Maybe it's because I was a crybaby when I was a kid, wearing my emotions on my teenage sleeve for the world to see. Really embarrassing. Shameful stuff. So I taught myself NOT to feel. Or at least worked hard to conceal it. So there you go.

No. This is not a pity party or anything like that. I will make a point. Right now:

When I watched Sense and Sensibility something happened. And it happens every time (just watched it a couple weeks ago) or when I read a favorite novel. I feel something. I love. AND I admit it. Pretty silly thing for me to make a big deal about loving it, huh? I know, but that's it. That tells you how strongly I feel about it and how attached to it I have become. It is now part of my identity, part of ME. I can't remove it. I don't try. I want it to be true about me. I take pride in it.

It confuses people I will admit (if some strange series of events ever leads me to tell anyone about it), as most people will step back and do a double-take. "You? Really? That doesn't sound like you." I know.

But get used to it.

Eddie Still Loves Elinor

As I went back and re-read my previous post (and I do re-read them--sometimes several times over. is that weird?), it occurred to me that although I have professed a love of 19th century British novels, what came across was a love for period movies like Sense and Sensibility. I spent almost no time talking about novels. So let me set the record straight, although I know I mentioned it in the post: I love the novels of the period much more than I love the movies made from those novels. I do. So that should tell you something.

Jane Austen is so smart, so witty, so clever. I scarcely need mention this, as most people who have read her know this. But it truly is indescribable. You cannot appreciate her until you have read her. So many times I will read from her novels and remark to myself, I know what she is doing here and yet I can't describe it.

And much of the same goes for so many others. Have you read Thackeray's Vanity Fair? Please. Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Agnes Grey by Emily, Charlotte, and Anne, the wonderful sisters Bronte? Collins's The Woman in White or The Moonstone? Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? Bram Stoker's Dracula? The Mayor of Casterbridge  ANY THING AT ALL by Thomas Hardy??? Come on, people. Please recognize before it was a movie that brought you to reluctant but honest tears it was a book that one of these stupid geniuses wrote down. BY HAND. on crappy pieces of PAPER with a lousy dip-it-in-ink-a-million-times pen!!!  That is insane! So, yeah, these movies I now love could not have been made without the book first.

So as much as I love Sense and Sensibility (have I covered how I feel about this movie?), or any others I have enjoyed, I bow in awe to the book and its author.

I really felt like I needed to get that down. And so in my next post I will attempt to defend my gushing professions of love (ok, not defend but explain and explore) of this stuff. And Sense and Sensibility (as you have seen) plays a considerable role in it. Make a note of it.