Out of the Ballpark

Posted on November 10, 2004 in Reflections

Seems that everything I get myself into I end up getting into for different reasons from most everyone else. I long ago resigned myself to sharing the world with people who see what they do as a competition to get there first or show their supremacy. I also learned that friendship for me consists of acquaintances: people don’t generally call me up and ask me to go out to do something with them on the spur of the moment. When they want to find me, they know the time and the place. If I am not there, they are shocked. So I’ve learned to walk alone, watchful of my steps in a way that some might call cowardly or arrogant.

In the things I like to do, I tend to seek out new directions, places where others have not been. What the crowd loves is not what I offer. I don’t press to get myself published by others or put on venues as a speaker. The word many would use for me is probably poetaster. I might have left them talking tonight after the reading at the Ugly Mug.

It comes down to many things: I’m not a veteran, I’m not gay, I’m not religious in the orthodox sense, I’m not a swinger, I’m not an athlete, I’m not a couch potato, I’m not easily classed as anything except strange. What makes me “strange and unusual” isn’t chic. So I fully expect to be ignored as I work on developing my own visions, my own language, my own take on the world.

There are chalked lines on red clay and finish lines all around me. I cut across these all the time, ignoring the lanes or the races that get run. Don’t look for me on the grass sniffing flowers like Ferdinand the Bull or climbing the chain link fence trying to get out because I’ve left the stadium long ago.