Every day, as I approach the big 6ty5, I build my heaven at the local airport. The AeroKnow Museum ( www.aeroknow.com )has been my life’s mission since before I realized it was my life’s mission: since high school when I began striving to take better pictures, since early college when I realized I wanted to write for a living. Though I have indeed written for a living (as in primary source of income) I have not written often enough for a living. If you are reading these words within 35 miles of Springfield, Illinois and want to hire a proven writer and photographer consider me. I am working regularly though I’m no longer salaried but hourly waged with fewer hours starting August 12, and I am grateful to be working at all. But I’m approaching 6ty5 and still hoping to be a full-time writer so I can get my diminishing PRIDE out from between my legs and BREATH instead of choking on diminishing hope. Developing what I wanted to develop has been the reason AeroKnow Museum at Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport has succeeded as much as it has. The circumstance here is approaching “nominal.” It’s a long way from “optimal,” and it”s even further from “heaven,” but I build toward heaven every day I am alive and have for the past two years and three months at the airport.
visitors to my heaven in process
Heaven to me is doing what I want to do, and at the airport I am doing what I want to do. This Saturday, I’ve chatted with seven visitors, and that’s a good day, especially considering I was not here at the museum four hours. I was at my now-part-time employer and a meeting that didn’t involve AeroKnow.
I am building my heaven because today is as close as I suppose I shall be to a heaven. Those who preach of heaven in an afterlife no longer convince me to endure hardship today so that I can kick back and relax in the eternity that comes next. I’m a “Northern Exposure” man. What if I zone into an eternity that broadcasts nothing but Zsa Zsa Gab0r and “Green Acres?”
I build what I can to the best of my ability and as true to my dream as I can. And I accept that I will deal with the jibbering marmoset who owns my current place of employment. This is the price I pay to build my heaven, but I know I do not desire to tolerate. I desire to transcend. I am a literate, cogent, lucid, thinking hummin’ bean who aspires to ascend beyond the jibbering random-coherence and heartily hurled monkeypoo that touches my world six days a week.
I’m dealing with it. This is the best I can do.
Live long . . . . . . . . . and proper.
