Last year's version of the mind-body problem: my mind gives orders that my body won’t obey. It’s a problem.
The body’s warranty has expired and spare parts are scarce. Plastic tubes To help me drain have become part of my day. So there’s still a will. But sometimes no way.
I am now my sister’s age when she died. And some nights as I lie down in darkness there’s a moment of wondering could this be the night of the Great Reckoning when everything I’ve said and done goes mute and I am gone.
And crawling over me like a slow stain is dread that everything important in life has already happened. I remember some days less than my dreams.
But friend, not this tone! Let us write a history of now. Body and soul, stand up and shout “Baseball road trip!”
Car: check. Best friend: check. Nostalgia for a simpler time. We can fake that one. The red zigzags on our map turn into places: Six ballparks in a week. Detroit haze, gasping Chicago wind, Milwaukee self-serve micro brew Cincinnati chili and watering eyes, Cleveland’s defiant self-love, Pittsburgh’s Primanti brothers monstrosity sandwich— Burger, coleslaw, and fries on toast.
The American dream tastes like fast food, But the mystery lives between the lines. Thwack of fastball into catcher’s glove, Whock! of line drive into the gap, Ball rolling free across the green While the runner speeds for home. Home.
Let’s keep going, friend. There’s another bridge up ahead and a ballpark’s lights shining somewhere in the dusk of the upper Midwest and the open road unrolls toward the setting sun.