I take a minute to sip some beer,
Miller High Life and Winston's,
Shakey Graves is stomping out through the wires,
Telling the tale of a boy walking to his execution,
His head held high,
Misguided in his actions that evening,
in the waning days of summer.

The song ends, I take out a tin,
Open it up and throw in the last of the dip I had,
After that I'll be done with smokeless tobacco.

Elton John is now waxing poetically about the ideas of roses in Spanish Harlem,
His voice eloquent, nostalgic, and tear-jerkingly honest,
The loss of innocence in an idea,
Ripped asunder by the cruelty of the world at large,
If only there were one Good Samaritan,
If they were to stand up and say enough!

In the album he is but the Master of Ceremonies in the château.
Weaving great tales of happiness and woe.

And isn't that what life is,
Both the ultimate comedy and tragedy?

But what do I know?
I'm just an Average Joe.

The day has been long,
And the day has been hot and still,
I sit here sweating in this dining room,
The sliding glass door open to the cooler night air,
Jim Croce is recollecting a story from his time in the National Guard.

That's what it was like with some fellas,
They'd get bad news while out on an exercise or during training,
It feels like a hammer blow to the gut,
You get numb,
And most guys,
They just continue with training,
Falling back on what they know,
Their muscle memory kicking in whilst the mind reels,
I had 3 death notifications like that,
And it never gets any easier,
Just harder,
For you learn to see the signs that someone is about to get a death notice,

The Chaplain shows up to your unit's location any day other than Sunday.
You're pulled off the line unexpectedly,
Other such things.
And all the time you're wondering who's it for,
Who gets the proverbial short end of the stick called fate this time,
And if it's a buddy,
You find time to have a beer with them when you get home.
Hell, if you don't know them all that well,
You find time to have a beer with them when you get home,
Because that's what you do,
Your unit is like family in the Infantry.
I've been present for births of my friends children, watch them grow up from a newborn into a child,
I've babysat them,
Been present for birthdays,
They've launched themselves at top speed  in flying tackles,
Crying out "Uncle Alex!"
Knowing I'd have some home baked treat I'd whipped up for them.
Ive helped their fathers bury family pets,
I've been there through divorces.

I try to visit when I can now, which isn't as often as I'd like.

When I first moved out of my parents place,
And got an apartment with two of my buddies,
They asked why whenever I wanted to relax,
I'd have a beer and listen to music,
Why not play video games or watch TV?

I looked at them and remembered why,
It's what my grandpa would do when my grandparents babysat me ,
He'd be sitting in his chair, chewing some tobacco and listening to the radio,
Big Bands blaring out of the tinny speaker,
Enjoying the shade of the screened-in mud room.
And when I was a little older,
My dad use to sit out on the back porch after a hard day's work doing landscaping,
Nursing a cold beer and be listening to his records, which he had set up right by the backdoor, it's screen door allowing the sound to pass through with ease.
Sometimes Led Zeppelin,
Sometimes Rush,
Sometimes it was a band of some local talent that was all the rage for a week back in 1974.

Now it was my turn, even years after the revelation, that it was their way to decompress,
A reprieve from the days struggles.
For me it's a dining room that has a sliding glass door that opens out into the back yard,
Where I can play songs of my choice,
Either from albums I've gleaned from record shops over the years,
Or CDs burned , a gift from one person or another that everyone seems to collect over the years.

I'm almost out of smokes,
I realize,
This thought halting the ruminations I was just having,
I need to also choose a new record or CD,
Maybe getting a drink wouldn't be too bad either.

It's dark,
Shaun Morgan is bellowing into my ears that he's reliving the same experiences over and over,
That nothing's forever.

The flick of a bic,
The taste of tobacco and ash,
Filling my lungs and giving my brain a buzz,
And in this sleepless night I'm inclined to agree with him,
Nothing lasts forever,
So what are you waiting for?

Eddie Vedder's voice is raised barely above a whisper,
He's saying his goodbyes to society,
Wishing for them the best,
But saying ultimately he didn't belong with them.

I felt like that once,
When I was embarking as a fresh faced kid,
To fulfill his dream of serving his country,
As an infantryman,
And when I arrived and as I was trained,
It felt like I was finally in my element,
With people who thought like me,
Our Drill Sergeants were the perfect example of what we could be if we applied ourselves,
Our First Sergeant; an example of what we could do if we pushed ourselves past what we were traditionally taught wasn't possible,
Our commander was the kind of individual that you whisper about,
A Captain with a very inked out past,
An old man playing a game where men tended to die young.
Walking within the vicinity of such individuals was akin of walking amongst giants.
We as recruits all started out without much confidence,
What little we did have,
Was false confidence.
These men taught us what it meant to square up and get nose to nose with a whole load of nasty with a **** eating grin on your face.
We were immortal.

I sit here alone years later,
About to start the next chapter in my life,
When it dawned on me.
We knew each other when we were immortal,
We're not immortal anymore.

Looking out from my summit,
Out below on the mountain of my mind,
The words of Getty Lee and his friends,
Sprouting from nowhere,
Telling me that the human being is like a planet,
And that planet is divided into hemispheres,
But one cannot exist without the other.
Intellect was one such hemisphere,
In another hemisphere was creativity,
Another was experiences,

And the smallest one was one I had been trying to ignore,
It was withered, abandoned, uncomfortable, alone,
It was the hemisphere of the bad ****,
Memories of traumas,
New and old.

But now I knew without those I would be a completely different man than I am now today,
What's a little pain in the long run?

This evening I was listening,
To the ebb and flow,
Maynard James Keenan was telling me a tale,
One of struggle and heartbreak,
The passing of a person he loved,
After 27 years in tribulation,
That she would finally be free.

It reminds me of when I was a child ,
When a person very close to me died,
Cancer ravaged their body,
A brilliant mind imprisoned in a failing vessel.
He was smarter than any of us,
And because he knew what the endgame would be,
That there would be no last minute solution,
No magic cure,
Because he knew that he was calm.

The way he carried himself,
Knowing that terrible truth,
Was nothing short of legendary,
Every stride with purpose,
An in-extinguishable fire in his eyes.
And in the end he greeted the end that we all must eventually face like a cool summer breeze,
Knowing that he would no longer feel the pain,
That of his body turning on itself.

He was better than us all,
Someone we should all aspire to be,
We're glad he has peace,
That he was finally called home.