Dreams are given to you when you’re young enough to dream them
before they can do you any harm.
They don’t start to hurt until you try to hold on to them after seeing how they really are.
“That’s a human ear all right.”
I used to think that dreams were for the young. I had to live longer to figure out that wasn’t true.
“Can I come over?” The divorce was final, pending my signature, but this wasn’t about signing papers, this was about Alicia.
Landfall was almost to the day on what would’ve been our third anniversary. Uneasy about sitting through this one alone, she gave me a call. Still in the daze of the blindside I’d refused to see and delusional enough to believe there was still a chance of reconciliation, I agreed. Sure. Come on over. We’ll ride it out together, because that’s what was meant to be.
20 was too young to get married, way too damn young. Everyone had told me so but I was always different, always moving faster than everybody I knew. Hell, they’d been wrong about everything else – no reason to think they’d suddenly smartened up now.
I thought they were jealous. I didn’t know they were speaking from pain.
Maybe it’s normal to spend a period of time after a divorce fumbling for what used to be there, like a limb that has been sawed off. I guess we were still trying to walk on that leg or scratch the itch on that arm we used to have, going through the motions of some kind of muscle memory until our brains caught up to the reality.
Our time together during this period was a weird, gauzy approximation of the past. We’d spend time with each other, watch TV, eat, laugh, sometimes sleep together and punctuate it all with shots that hit like blanks. We’d make remarks about this or that, sharp remarks designed to cut but really only bleeding off from the full reservoir of pain. It was like the viciousness had the consistency of steam and we were somehow removed from it, living in a dream.
It’s only right that you should play the way you feel it
But listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness
Like a heartbeat, drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering
What you had, And what you lost
And what you had, And what you lost
“Hey you wanna go for a ride?”
My memories of the A’s started sometime in the mid-60’s. Crummy teams, constant farm team for the Yankees, but their cards were always cool. That green and gold looked really sharp against the grass, and they had these interesting players too. Jim Nash, 12-1 that one year. Jim Hunter. Dagoberto Campaneris, who had like nine names on the back of his card, one for each of the positions he played one year. Blue Moon Odom. And they had those dangerous white shoes, back when white shoes were Striking A Blow Against The Man, a season before you could buy them in every sporting goods store. When I wore my white cleats and jacked my stirrups as far up as they’d go, I knew I was a full-on Outlaw.
They carried this outlaw image into California and the 70s, when they started to win World Series and flaunt their long hair and mustaches. I dug the A’s, they always seemed cool and flashy and full of summer.
Somewhere in there, after baseball woke up to greet the dawn of Free Agency, reality started to slap Oakland’s team hard. They were never, ever going to be able to compete with the big boys on a cash basis, so they had to try to be smarter. This isn’t a new development – hell, the Mahatma got called a genius for it 40 years before – but slapping a catchy name on it and making it a Movement was as fresh as white shoes used to be. This is where the road Oakland has taken begins to converge with the road the Astros are mapping out.
“You put your disease in me. It helps me. It makes me strong.”
Our lives continued to intertwine in an unnatural way after the breakup. I spent six months trying to fight it, but when every road was a road we’d been on, every place I went was someplace I’d been with her and I started to see her face in shadows I knew I had to leave. I moved back to where I’d come from and started to build new dreams on top of the old ones. In three months, she’d moved back too, in an apartment a mile away. Took a part-time job where we used to work, where I still had friends but now couldn’t go back to. She’d call me to tell me about something of mine she’d come across and how should she get it to me? I think every turn of the knife was an unconscious twitch, but they damn sure hurt as if they’d been intentional.
It took years before I stopped hurting myself and everyone around me. It was several years after that before I was rational about the whole thing and could see beyond a field of blood, lies and hurt. There’s a point where dreams become cruel teases of your own failure, and if you can’t replace them with new dreams the fire is going to burn until there is nothing left.
Friday, May 24, 7:10 PM CDT, Minute Maid Park
Tommy Milone, LHP (4-5, 3.47) vs. Erik Bedard, LHP (0-2, 6.00)
Saturday, May 25, 6:15 PM CDT, Minute Maid Park
A.J. Griffin, RHP (4-3, 3.59) vs. Lucas Harrell, RHP (3-5, 4.63)
Sunday, May 26, 1:10 PM CDT, Minute Maid Park
Bartolo Colon, RHP (4-2, 4.31) vs. Dallas Keuchel, LHP (1-1, 4.93)
We’re well acquainted with the dream of the Astros, the plan to emerge from the nuclear winter and climb back to where they were before. It’s too early to judge anything other than their resolve, which seems strong and committed. Only the fans who pay the closest attention can see the infrequent glints – better infield defense, Dominguez thrilling us with plays the same way we used to marvel at Michael Bourn, the continued development of Jose Altuve. They’re trying to build a future, one dream at a time. Maybe if we all click our heels together at the same time, it’ll happen.
A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper:
“Go to sleep, everything is alright”
“Suave! Goddamn, you’re one suave fucker!”
In the last couple of weeks I’ve climbed into something like a dream myself. I’ve reconnected with some old friends who are trying to drag an old ship back out on the seas, and through luck and happenstance I’m pulling too. It’s been a long time since I worked the road, shows with a band and now I’m in the middle of an escapade with a gang of pirates I truly love. I’ve joked that it’s a little like time travel, slipping into a skin I wore when I was much younger, playing that old game and seeing that only some of the rules have changed. Family and friends have been supportive of me while I take a break from my life for this. I didn’t look at it as recapturing some things I’d lost touch with but in the end there is a sense of redemption and resurrection and rededication about it all. I’m charging some batteries and at the same time making friends of heroes.
I’m finding out that it’s ok to have dreams again. Sometimes they do come true.
Thunder only happens when it’s raining
Players only love you when they’re playing
They say, women, they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know
You’ll know