Tarmac Meditations #169: I Ain’t Heavy, I Am My Brother

Remember when depressed was just another word for being sad or maybe blue? And, sometimes, after you got to be a teenager, if you were blue you could get into a conversation about having the Blues. Whatever they were. It made one seem more real and perhaps a bit worldly. And it was a useful way to seem both intense and possibly desirable to the opposite sex. It could lead to getting laid, so to speak.

As you got older, there was existential angst to be had, Schadenfreude to be aware of, not to mention Weltscmerz, in a diverse universe of Weltanschaung to contend with, and like that. All to be avoided or wallowed in as the case may be. The Blues were much simpler than all that heavy traffic. They could be about having lost your girlfriend, having gotten drunk, having gotten into a fight. Maybe about having gotten drunk, gotten into a fight and losing your girlfriend in one lost weekend. Or maybe last Thursday. And, maybe you were standing in the kitchen with a knife in your hand and a chicken staring back at you from the cutting board. Maybe then you realized there were at least four things you can do with a knife and a chicken and an empty pot and all of them are the Blues. A whole mess of that stuff could be a good country tune as well. That’s what being sad was.

These days, all of that stuff falls under the heading of mileage, at least it does for me. It’s easier that way. And more useful as shorthand, hence Tarmac Meditations. My place for relaxing and paying attention, all the while being in touch with the slip-slide of my days. And the whimsy of the passing parade. Not sad by any means but certainly filled with feelings and the sense that there is still shit to do and my time is both at hand and slipping away at one and the same time. All of this mileage may be just another reminder for me to be getting back to work, lacing up and lighting out by doing what there is to do with what I’ve got. I’m betting my life on it. And I’m all in. As if had any choice in the matter.

There, I feel a whole lot better. 

Image Credits

Photos by Michael Lebowitz. All rights reserved.