HOUSTON Astros (42-85) vs. COLORADO Rockies (60-68)
August 22-24, 2011
Mile High Beer Park
CRYSTAL BEACH (SnS) – One could hear the sound of the shrimp boat’s engines somewhere out on the water. The boat didn’t sound far off. In fact, when the onshore wind gusted, it sounded like it was right on top of us. First a low growling noise, while it was dragging its nets across the sandy, muddy bottom; then a high-pitched whine, as it pulled them to the surface. When the tide was in like it was that night, those boats would sometimes trawl all the way in to the first sandbar, right off the beach. They did this in the daytime, too; which was stupid. People would be swimming out past where the boats had come in. It’s a wonder more weren’t churned up in the boat’s big props, or drowned by being caught up in the trawling nets and dragged along the bottom for awhile. Shrimp bait, essentially.
It seemed like it was a dicey proposition to trawl that close to shore at night, as well. It wouldn’t take much, one good onshore wave, to run the trawler aground, costing the operation a lot of money. Maybe the captain was worried about being too close to the beach that night, which is why he got out his high intensity spotlight and shined it toward land. It was just a coincidence, a stitch in time, that my brother and I were sitting in lawn chairs out there on Crystal Beach in the middle of the night that night, fucked up beyond reason and passed out. That was probably why we were both pretty confused when the captain shined that spotlight in our direction all of the sudden. In our state, we could have taken that for anything, initially. Anything from a shrimp boat captain shining his spotlight, which is what my brother thinks he saw, to a startling vision with accompanying commentary, which is what I saw and heard and am certain is what really happened.
“Three things cannot hide for long: the Moon, the Sun, and the Truth.”
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SCHEDULE
Game One (Aug 22) 6:40 MDT Denver FSW
Game Two (Aug 23) 6:40 MDT Denver FSW
Game Three (Aug 24) 1:10 MDT Denver My 20
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Even in the quiet, I can hear her. Even in the stillness, I can sense her. Even in the total vacuum, her love surrounds me. It comforts me. It scares me, too.
The first time happened when I was just a pup, maybe 11, 12 years old. I had an epiphany, a vivid dream that would not go away. Up to that time, even though I had been dutifully raised in the Chucrh and instructed in the beliefs, in fact I did not believe . . . in the sense that I had the childlike conviction that if I couldn’t see something, or hear its voice or touch the surface of its skin, it wasn’t there. I had no faith.
That night, I prayed before going to sleep while my mother watched, as usual. Except this time it wasn’t for show, I really meant it. I was having some personal problem that really bothered me – I don’t remember what it was, and I don’t think it matters – and I prayed for a resolution that I could deal with and be happy with.
I got a head rush right away, a rushing in my ears tha lasted for half an hour. I was sitting along the banks of a beautiful, idealized river. Not turgid and brown and full of saltwater and debris, like the Neches River I grew up on. This river was blue, blue . . . and ran swiftly but evenly. It was very pleasant to look at, one could get lost in the current and the gurgling of the water.
Next to the river sat a ferryman and his boat. He would take me across the river for a small fee, he said.
I saw a vision of thousands of cut and polished gemstones in a variety of shapes. All were dark blue and shiny, like spinel. They were the remains of a larger, even more beautiful stone – a rock, almost – that was thrown to the ground in anger, beyond the edges of my subconsciousness. In my vision, as my sight sharpened, the beautiful stones all came together and appeared to be fused, in the shape of a cross. It was then that I saw her standing there, for the very first time.
A vision of beauty, and desire. I felt her in my heart, and in my lower regions, too. In my religion, as in most, the sacred and the profane often lie down very close together. Modern sensibilities have sort of airbrushed the details out. But the soul and the body know.
I have seen her, repeatedly, throughout my life, though usually not in so dramatic a setting. She is my angel, I guess. My personal messenger from Heaven. When I am with her she slows down time for me, and gives me the gift of Vision . . . real vision, the kind that allows me, for a few seconds, to see how all the scary, crazy shit in my life, in all our lives, fits together, and how everything will turn out all right, if we let it. It is like being in God’s head for a few seconds, and seeing out his eyeballs, or maybe his eye sockets. Then I go back to “normal”, and my angel is gone. Or, at least, I cannot see her anymore. I can still sense her presence, though.
Right now, my angel is a beautiful woman who lives down the street from me, and has a swimming pool. Her name is Antoinette, and she drives a white Corvette. As far as I know, she never was a majorette, though I’ve definitely seen her sweat (though she’d prefer if I call it ‘perspiring’.) This all has major rhyming possibilities, but I haven’t put anything together. Yet.
“When someone seeks, then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”
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PITCHING MATCHUPS
Game One – HOUSTON (Brett Myers 3-12, 4.72) vs. COLORADO (Jhoulys Chacin 9-10, 3.59)
Game Two – HOUSTON (Bud Norris 6-8, 3.61) vs. COLORADO (Alex White 0-0, 0.00)
Game Three – HOUSTON (Wandy Rodriguez 9-9, 3.31) vs. COLORADO (Aaron Cook 3-7, 5.23)
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All the promise that was there at the beginning, all the hopes and possibilities, all the goals I had and all the goals other interested and well-meaning parties had for me, all that is gone.
I have buried my father, and one brother. I don’t know this for a fact, but I have felt at times that neither lived long enough to get past a sense of disappointment with me. I talk to my mother now, and I am amazed at her ability to mentally sidestep all the burning aspirations she had for me, and to talk not about what hasn’t or didn’t, or did happen; but rather, what is to come, the possibilities that are out there. It is called unconditional love, I think, and I for one will never understand it.
I recently said goodbye to my oldest son . . . he is beautiful, as bright as a new penny from day one, a shining diamond. After I helped him move into his dorm and we had dinner and talked about his upcoming classes and how he’ll be living away from home and how his school seemed to be crawling with young, attractive women (a 7-to-1 female-to-male ratio, he said with a smile) . . . after all that there was a lull in the conversation while we waited for the bill, and it had begun to darken outside, and I suddenly realized with a jolt that the thing I had been avoiding assiduously for weeks, maybe years, maybe forever, was right in front of me. My boy, this boy, who I’d helped raise to manhood . . . well, for one thing I don’t really feel like I had a lot to do with making him what he is, the day-to-day hands-on stuff. That was done by his mom and her family. I was always working or something. About all I really did was teach him how to play sports, introduce him to quality music (he told me recently he remembered how I sang him to sleep every night when he was a toddler . . . “I remember the first couple of lines of the lullaby you sang,” he said. “Something like, ‘I was born in a cross-fire hurricane/And I howled at my ma through the driving rain . . . ‘“ Then he gave me a sidelong smile), gave him dubious advice about women (despite or because of it, he seems to do all right). Aside from those things, my main contribution was a sort of stability, and my own unconditional love.
Perhaps I undervalue some of those things. My thoughts at the restaurant centered around my own selfish sense of loss, and the realization that, my God, I’ve raised and groomed strosrays, jr., and now I am unleashing him on the world. My God.
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Anyway, the promise I had at the start of my journey is long gone. I spent a lot of it in dark bars, and on the beach, and in the water. I got sidetracked a gazillion times along the way. I traded one possible ultimate reality laid out for me for one quite a bit different, as it turns out. There is no point in spending much time on everything that came before now. That is the gift my mother has. She looks forward, always.
It is like the question of faith, in a way. My own belief is one can make a treansition from no faith to faith, from non-believing to devoutness. A couple of epiphanies/visions/visitations will take care of that for you. But it is much more difficult if not impossible to go from truly having faith to being truly devoid of it. Fuck. . . one subject to be straight up with is the level of faith and devotion one has at the beginning of the journey, and at key points along the way.
“I live in my dreams. Other people live in dreams, too . . . just not their own.”
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INJURIES
HOUSTON – Alberto Arias (RHP), 60-day DL, out for the season. Jason Castro (C), 60-day DL, possibly back in September. Enerio DelRosario (LHP), 15-day DL, return in September. Brandon Lyon (RHP), 60-day DL, out for season. Jordan Schafer (OF), imminent return.
COLORADO – Alex Cobb (RHP), 60-day DL, out for season. Jose Lobaton (C), 15-day DL, return imminent. Justin Ruggiano (OF), 15-day DL, return imminent.
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It occurs to me I havrn’t done as much lately to warrant the protection I have had bestowed upon me, and I have had thoughts of a way to transform my own blind luck to my offspeing. But of course, that is not possible. He doesn’t need it, anyway, and it turns out I still may.
So I’ve come to accept it, finally. All of it. And there is some peace in that.
Along the way I have travelled far beyond and outside of the idea I started out with. There were points along the way where one could say I was definitely lost. But I finally made the turn out there somewhere, like a distant, crazy comet, and started on the long journey back.
One day maybe I’ll be like some holy man, or guru – okay, maybe not. I do hope I live long enough to see the river of my childhood vision again. I want to sit on the bank that runs along it for a long time, and gaze into the water. Perhaps by that time, I will have come to a point where I do not beat up on myself so much, where I can just listen to the sound of the running water, and look at the beautiful colors, and quietly thank God for all the stuff he did to me along the way, good and not so good. There was a reason for all of it, and an answer to every question, that can be contained in the immense bigness of the world, or in the corner of a wry smile from my son, which says “I love you” louder than if a thousand angels were singing it.
“I love you, too,“ I say, rising up finally and looking for the ferryman, the one who will take me across.
“I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it.”
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Astros win the series, 3-0.
Time is short, and here’s the damn thing about it
You’re gonna die, gonna die, for sure
You can learn to live with love or without it
But there ain’t no cure
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