Of Bears and Penguins

"I want to know, do I stay or do I go,
and maybe try another time
And do I really have a hand
in my forgetting?" ~ The Fairest of the Seasons, Nico

"I never seen you looking so bad my funky one.
You tell me that your superfine mind has come undone
Any major dude with half a heart surely will tell you, my friend,
Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again.
When the demon is at your door
In the morning it won't be there no more." ~ Any Major Dude, Steely Dan

Just some songs that I've been listening to lately.

A Foggy Day and Steely Dan
The group of friends I had in high-school was close. We were all in band, all of us were pretty serious musicians, and we all listened to mostly the same music. We went through phases in our musical tastes, and we hit Steely Dan as juniors and seniors at FBA.

That was the year that the Lady Saints basketball team lost the semi-final game in the last minutes after a missed free throw, which should have been re-shot. The entire gym was silent, and just as our girl went up for the shot an opposing fan blew an air-horn which was specifically prohibited by the rules.

The clock ran out, and the FBA fans just stood there.

In a school that small, everyone feels quite keenly connected to the ups and downs of the teams. For the seniors, it had been the last chance at that sweetly fleeting glory that is high-school competition. But everyone had wanted that banner proclaiming FBA as the reigning state champions. It was a tangible outcome of effort, and something that would proclaim your success long after you had left the school's hallways.

The band had, of course, traveled to the game. As the situation became more desperate the usual chatter and laughter that went on in the stands was suspended as we focused all of our attention on the battle taking place below. We willed the ball to slip cleanly into the baskets, we cheered and yelled for the girls that we had watched over the course of the season and whom we had known since childhood.

The band loaded up the instruments and left the gym. No one talked, and we glared at everyone from hooded eyes.
As we got outside, one of the trumpet players, an eighth grader who played in the band, lost it and unleashed on a sophomore trumpet player. Slugged him hard enough to make him cry.

The upperclassmen, myself included, separated the two of them while chastising both. "What were you thinking, you don't just lose your temper like that."

But secretly we cheered the eigth grader on. We'd all been wanting to pop this other kid for quite sometime, and we're pleased that someone had done the job. Middle schoolers could get away with that stuff much more easily than juniors or seniors who were supposed to know better.

My mom drove Heather and I back to Dallas after the game. This I remember clearly: it was a damp and grainy sky, and we sat in the back of the car listening to Steely Dan, and looking at each other, thinking about being a game away from state and losing to a team from Houston, and feeling that Waco was a pit of a town, even if it did have Baylor and Dr. Pepper.

Any Major Dude, was definitely one of my favorite songs on the CD. I deemed it deep in the way only a 16 year old can. I played the song for Heather, explaining that the lyrics, were "just, really good, you know." She agreed. We were juniors and thought we knew just about everything there was to know. We were smarter than all our teachers, and most adults. Not being passionate at your life or beliefs was the most contemptible offense we could imagine. We gave no quarter to those who had shown no zeal for what they did in their careers, or in what they believed of the world.

All that talk of worlds falling apart and together -- we wallowed in it. Really profound. Far out. Oh yeah, we'd seen things fall apart, minds come undone, we knew what was out there. We were 16, living in the suburbs of Dallas, attending a private religious school, and planning for college. Yeah, we had a lot of worldly experience. But being a teenager is a science of extremes. You know or you don't, you can or you can't, you win or you lose. For us, the happy medium was to be avoided at all costs.

Despite our narrow perspective, we knew that things fell apart, but both us believed that they really did fall back eventually.

It's something that I think about on days that are misty gray and cold.

Columbia is five years and several thousand miles from that day when we lost, and Jacob hit William, and our band was suffering under a band director we called "The Flem," and our friend Jack had left us to move to Kansas City. Everything that happened seemed to affect us so greatly -- everything that happened seemed huge.

Since then I've seen minor worlds, and a couple of major ones implode in shimmering catastrophy. Not to imply that I'm any more experieced than I was at 16. I'm only slightly wiser than I was then, and I know a significantly lesser amount then I did in high-school.

The only difference is that now I truly question whether those worlds ever do fall together again in any coherent manner.