It Started Last June

When my valued acquaintance Rich Saal called from the State Journal-Register last June, asking if that fine paper might cover my activities at Springfield Air Rendezvous, I was floored. The joy of the flight with the U.S. Jet Team flying French-built Fouga Magisters (the irony still grates on me like Little Richard singing harmony with Maria Callas) and reporter Shannon Kirshner’s excellent article still reverberates as though it happened yesterday, which in poet-time, it did. Throughout the my three-day immersion into that wonderful event, the notion that this was my last Springfield Air Rendezvous whispered in my ear, like a Roman to Julius in a fateful March. On the final day, as I shared post-show hospitality with the nucleus of that event, including Tim Weaver, Kim and convivial ensemble, the notion about screamed to my soul, though no one else heard it. Later in 2006 I began to accept grim reality that my dream of getting my AeroKnow aviation collection into a publicly supported environs, out of my house and into a public venue was a dream that would not come true.

A better head, after making that conclusion, would have begun jettisoning AeroKnow resources. I did not. I’m just lowering my expectations, putting less time into the web site and hating the world less for not dancing to the beat of my AeroKnow drum. Yes, it depresses me, but I will not surrender the dream.

So since last September when my 59th birthday passed . . . . .a friend, who has shared several birthday treat lunch buffets near the big day greeted me with “Hey Job, you’re really big one is next year. We’ll have to do lunch THEN!” Turning 59 knocked the breath out of me for the rest of the year, and to a lesser degree, this year. I’m evolving out of my “old goat mode,” which involves, metaphorically, grim tears with my head in the soggy sand of unremitting circumstance as warmer weather and spring settle in.

For 30 frikking yearsl, I altered my life, accepting circumstances no normal male tolerate, in the naiive belief that the aviation history colection would mature into a legitimate museum. It did not..

Well, you know when you put everything you have into a flight to the moon only to discover you may not make it as far as Waverly, the noble options aren’t as bright and shining at age 59 as they were at age 29. What the fring-frang do I do?

One thing I’ve done is pour my heart and soul into the arts as I never have before. The response from the visual arts community in the last two years has exceeded all I reaped from aviation circles over the last 30. Wow, aye? After not writing a poem since last November, I’ve written two poems in the past month. Having my heat into April has helped. I was not so blessed this time last year.

So why am I blowing it out here? It’s important for you to know this about me, whomever you are. The ultimate solace for certifiable megalomaniacs (as some consider me to be) is to tell you about me, for as long as you tune in and care to read these words, without my having to spend comparable time reading your words, hearing about your life. Believe it or not, I’d LIKE to hear/read about your life. I visit the blogs mentioned in the menu on the right, and sharing other lives helps me moderate the perspective of mine. I read TONS of poetry in anthologies that leaves me scratching my nose and picking my head, numb-struck at what passes for poetry . . . . and that’s okay. Every now and then I find a nugget that makes me smile. So I return to the “babbling book” in hopes of finding another. Life is like that: so much of what the bovines leave in the pasuture, but then the nuggets! Always . . . . . eventually . . . . . .. the nuggets!

Saturday night I watched the movie Patton for about the tenth time since I bought the video in about 1993. When I saw it for the first time at the Senate Theater in downtown Springfield, eons ago, I stayed and watched it again. It still has a restorative effect on me. I felt a tad sad Saturday because I never shared my gratitude with the people who put it together, particularly the star George C. Scott. So many of them are gone today, but knew when they were alive, I hope, of the gratitude of millions of viewers. And if some of them were never thanked (as my brother might say, “same difference.” They didn’t work so hard on a wonderful end product so strangers could speak their appreciation to them. Their payoff was sooner and more useful. Most of them, I suppose, produced the movie because it seemed like the best thing to do with their lives at the time.

I know every movie and every noble effort doesn’t reap rich rewards. The reward that matters most is the privilege, coincidental or earned, of doing something that matters to you. That’s what I believe when it comes to AeroKnow, and poetry and CIVAG. Perhaps the reason both have achieved less than stellar accalim is because the privilege of shaping them is coincidental; not earned. The effort is what matters, and I’m okay with leaving it at that. But as they say, “All work and no pay make Jack strong . . . . . and irrelevant” That’s okay too.

The musical A Chorus Line includes a wonderful song which says, “Kiss the day goodbye. The sweetness and the sorrow. We did what we had to do. Still I won’t regret what I did for love, what I did for love.”

Thanks for reading this.

Live long . . . . . and proper.