Revenant Glory

”The puzzle pieces are shifting around, rearranging themselves to shape a different image. The vision I see, though a glass, darkly, is a revenant glory waiting for me… but it’s not here.”
--from the blog post Assets, posted December 15, 2008.


Josh Kalichman was here. He came in Monday night, on his way from KC. We did stuff. Things were done by us. He left this morning.

Having instant access to the great outdoors, we had a couple of bonfires during his too-brief visit. We reminisced with 20/20 vision about our time at BG, both good and bad. We discussed the “epic-ness” of those two years, how there was an ensemble cast of truly awesome characters. And we talked about how frustrating it is that it’s nigh impossible to maintain such a fellowship.

I only blog out of obligation. There’s no new philosophical musing here. No dining on ashes. No pining for better days. No epiphany, no nugget of wisdom. Just saying the K-man was here. And that he’s one of the elite few who might actually be able to facilitate a return to awesomeness.

I have a vision of this time-to-be of revenant glory: the “day of the bard,” as it were. Try as I might, however, every which way I attempt to paint a fairly optimistic picture, I end up deleting the paragraph(s), hearing in my mind’s ear what salience you, the reader, might misapprehend. So I keep rewriting and deleting my description of this flight of fancy, not wishing to open the door to yet another rebuke for my supposed “wanton whimsy.” Screw it. As you can tell from the previous blog post, I am a little… agitated these days. Maybe I’ve lost my “center,” but unless your name is Eric Banks I don’t want to hear your opinion on the matter.

Josh K was here. We did what we could, being in the middle of nowhere and without funds for a day trip to Ozarks or anything like that. We talked about past, present, and future, but—damn it—it was not one of those woe-is-me-why-do-we-never-get-to-do-anything-fun conversations. Back off. I didn’t do anything wrong here.

I’m on a quest. A quest to carve a slice of life for myself, one where I can spend my days in quiet dignity. Yes, I realize that my blog is far from dignified. I’ve heard every conceivable criticism about every facet of my character. A little too much. From all sides, not just from any one source. I’m sorry if my blog smacks of Unenlightened “whining” and graceless “complaining,” but perhaps you are projecting? Hmm. Hey, here’s an idea… how about you don’t abuse the comment window’s ability to start a fight?

Anyway, back to the point. A “return to awesomeness”… hmmm… even if things turned around for me tomorrow, it’s almost as though the realization my current daydream would amount merely to the most jejune of times during my first year in Kansas City, when I was striving to build upon and improve the status quo. I mean, I don’t expect to get much out of life anymore. The occasional oasis of vivacity within a desert of the mundane would be Xanadu to me now. It reminds me of a quote:

“The flip side of fear of failure is triumph, joy, and satisfaction in success. Realizing that this dichotomy will come less and less in my job, I realized that I'm a professional: sitting on my stone throne like a Rodin sculpture, silently reliving my days of glory, while staring into the dark.”
--the Captain

Regardless of how you are considering ending our friendship over this blog post, I am going to continue to ponder the K-man’s conversation about how to reclaim our glory.

Josh Kalichman was here. It was a good time, but I wish he could have stayed longer. As for the once and future bard, I simply cannot get these cues out of my head:

Scorponok (Transformers, Steve Jablonsky)
General Kota and the Control Room Duel (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Mark Griskey)
Why So Serious? (The Dark Knight, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard)
Storming New Caprica (Battlestar Galactica: Season Three, Bear McCreary)
Bumblebee (Transformers, Steve Jablonsky)