Off the Mark

Well, I made it through my story-song just fine yesterday.  My left leg started shaking pretty violently towards the end for some stupid reason.  Residual embarrassment from last week? 

The extra week actually allowed me to make it more my own and to say it as a poem vs. singing it—which was terrifying to me.

Theöne - Lambchop

Dedicated to the woman I have not yet met.

Best of all
are the things that’s in this world
that’s worth a look.
You make it hard when I’m with you
scary sights.
All the things that haven’t happened
but just might.
Don’t think it over so quickly.
Look around.
I’m still here.
Take your time,
but not a year.
Please make me shudder
when you are near.
You are the one.

You undermine
all the terror and the grace
of my belief.
I want to shake up your whole life.
Fearing that
all this specialness will fade with just a kiss.
I think I have a solution.
Take a walk,
hold my hand,
don’t say a word,
I’ll understand.
We’ll change the world,
make no demands.
You are the one.

Have we lost sight
of the sacrifice it takes to make a life?
If it’s ours, then so be it.
It’s just my wish
that our world be that of reproductive bliss.
It’s just a thought,
there’s no pressure.
Gomer Pyle
was just a man
who served his country
as best he can.
I’m in a state,
you are the flag.
You are theone

But don’t you know?
This must be true
I can do nothing
but think of you
and there’s the phone
and here’s the number.
You are the one.

This song is very important to me.  It represents the realization that a budding relationship is going to have a profound impact on both lives. 

I can give or take the "reproductive bliss" part as I have two wonderful adult children.  At this point in my life it would take a very special woman for me to want to have more children.  I have learned the long, hard way not to rule out the possibility.  I have made far too many statements in my life that I have had come back to bite me in the ass.

Even more important are the ideas of it being hard to be with someone in the "scary sights" sense and the inevitable shaking up of one’s life.  I want nothing more in the world than to have an intensely meaningful, long-term relationship  with a very special woman.  But, that thought right now is terrifying in the sense of how would I even begin to add those complications to an already overfull life of graduate education.  I have received much well-meaning advice from friends and family "to just go for it."   But I don’t because there is just too much going on, or not going on but should be,  that I don’t see how I can even consider it.

So for now I am content to have all the wonderful women friends that I do that let me practice being the kind of man that I want to be in a safe environment for them and me.  I love them all dearly!