The Place where Imagination becomes Reality - Page One

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» Being Able to Execute a Complex Skill Set when Your Date with Destiny Arrives

The reason why you need to continue doing the work .. is so that when your time comes .. when your opportunity comes .. when your test comes .. when your trial comes .. when your identity crisis comes .. you will be able execute in a timely and effective manner.

And I can guarantee you that, if you do not do the work, then you will not be able to prevail against such overwhelming forces.

I will gladly put that in writing.

Even with doing the work, you are still in for a ride. But without it, you can fuhgettaboutit.

Marshall knows exactly what I am talking about here. It's all about preparation and developing your skills .. in the gym, so to speak.

» An Eddie Glenn Primer

Eddie Glenn was one of the older kids in the neighborhood. He lived right across the street, on the corner, right next to Lance. When we were 10, he was probably 15 or 16.

There were a number of these older kids in the neighborhood .. the Valenti's, for example, identical twins, Alan and Brian, lived a few houses down.

But Eddie lived closest and he would sometimes play steady-quarterback and organize football games with us little kids in the neighborhood. He was clearly into football.

» Merry Christmas, Girly

Dec 25, 2017 » Merry Christmas, girly. I am going to tell you the Eddie Glenn story today .. as my gift to you.

I hope that I have not set the expectations too high .. because it is not a very exciting story.

But it illustrates a point for me better than anything else I have come across.

» The Actual Eddie Glenn Story

So the four of us are playing two-hand touch football in Lance's front yard. There is myself and Eddie Glenn and my cousin Bobby (who lived upstairs) and Lance.

We took turns as receiver with the other two playing pass defenders. Eddie played steady-QB.

» Imagine Me Throwing the Ball

When it was my turn to play receiver, Eddie says to me quietly in our huddle,

"Dont look now, but there is a big root sticking up right in front of the tree. Line up to my left. On two, I want you to run fast as you can straight for that root. When your right foot touches that root, turn immediately to your left and the ball is going to be there waiting for you. While you are running, keep looking straight ahead, but imagine me throwing the ball just before you get there .. cuz that's what I'm gonna do."

And this is exactly what happened. Eddie Glenn was so fucking happy. That may have very well been the happiest that I have ever seen him. Probably was.

» The Ball Hit Me Right in the Chest

The ball hit me right in the chest when I turned around. I was actually surprised that I caught the thing. It could have so easily bounced off of me .. but my arms were already on the way up .. expecting the ball to be there waiting for me. Like he said.

I did not catch this ball out in front of me .. like I usually did. Which is why it surprised me that I actually caught it.

Eddie shouted, "Yes! That's exactly how your cousin does it." He was jumping up and down.

» Time to Meet the Family

The 'cousin' that Eddie Glenn was talking about there .. is not the cousin who I am playing with here in Lance's front yard. No, ma'am.

Rather Eddie was talking about my » cousin Gary. My much-older cousin .. on my dad's side.

All of my cousins on my dad's side are older than me .. because my dad is the baby of six.

I only have two cousins who are younger » Tunie (Diane), who is like a sister, and her younger brother Richie. They are both on my mom's side.

Gary was first son (like me) of my dad's eldest brother .. who was the oldest of six.

» Meghan Meets with the Royal Family on Christmas Day

Speaking of meeting the family on Christmas day .. here is a photo of Meghan with Prince Harry and the royal family at Sandringham, Norfolk, England earlier today.

I grabbed this particular image because it includes multiple generations, and is bookended by brothers.

The service was held at St. Mary Magdalene Church. I am happy for them. Talk about the place where imagination becomes reality.

» The Three Eldest Sons of Three Brothers with Three Sisters

So Gary is the first son of the eldest son, and I am the first son of the youngest son. (Cousin Kenny is the first son of the middle brother .. which was probably the least dysfunctional family of them all. And they had their problems, too.)

My dad was the youngest of six, with 3 boys and 3 girls. Catholics .. you know.

These six kids had many sons themselves .. with only a few daughters .. of which cousin Patti is my favorite and closest. But all the girls are very cool and easy to talk to and easy to laugh with.

» The Children of the Brothers Karamazov

It would be a fearful path to tread .. but you might see how easily one could slip into such things .. as pattern-matching these three brothers with the brothers Karamazov.

I am known for doing crazy shit just like this. This is exactly why I get into so much trouble .. and why I like girls like you.

» I Bet that Anna Knows what I am Talking About

Something tells me that Anna knows exactly what I am talking about here.

Once you watch a video by a certain person, then YouTube suggests other videos by the same channel.

I have watched a handful of her videos. She cracks me up. She had me laughing out loud.

This is quality stuff that she is doing. I am impressed. The attention-to-detail is remarkable.

There are many aspects to her videos that are striking. It's not a one-dimensional thing that she is doing.

Note that this narrative that Anna is provoking has been lifted and transferred to its own page » The Fruits of Honest Self-Reflection (01 Jan 2018).

» The Youngest Brother Karamazov is the Special One

Anyway, girly .. getting back to the deep, dark family secrets .. because my dad was the youngest of three brothers, in this way, I am sort of like the eldest son of » the youngest brother Karamazov.

In Dostoevsky's book .. which, oh, by the way, has been been called "one of the supreme achievements in literature" .. and here they are talking about books written in any language .. at any time, ever .. in the history of planet earth.

In this book, the youngest brother Karamazov, Alyosha, is the special one. He represents spiritual things.

While the two older brothers represent the intellectual and the sensual.

But dad was nobody's idea of an example of spirituality. Not hardly.

I never saw the man reading a book -- ever. Not even one time. Education was obviously not important to him. It was clearly not something that he considered a priority.

Dad never seemed interested in bettering himself .. either his professional skill set, or in terms of becoming a more fully evolved human being. (I wished that he would have done both.)

» The Direction of an Intimate Relationship

This is sort of what Nana was talking about when she told me "Your mother wanted to keep growing, but your father didnt. And this is why they grew apart."

For me, this is the gist of a relationship .. but no matter where you and your intimate lover happen to be along your paths to personal and professional growth .. you should both be on your paths toward your promised land.

It should not surprise you that this is not always the case. If both partners are content to stagnate, then perhaps this might work.

But if one partner wants to fulfill their full potential .. and the other partner demands that they live by less than their best .. then it is inevitable that someday he will come to a fork in the road. Where a decision must be made.

Anyway .. my point here is to say that the story's patterns - between the brothers Karamazov and my dad's brothers - do not match perfectly.

But if you asked me which of the Karamazov's brother I would want to be .. I would say 'Alyosha'. I mean, this is sort of the whole point of Dostoevsky's story.

» The Special Jersey

Gary quarterbacked the big all-state game .. where the best of the best played.

Being a special game, they let the players keep the jersey that they wore during this game.

This jersey has history .. but I dare not explore this history. This jersey has so much history .. that everything could easily come unwound if I were to touch this jersey.

All the darkest of the dark dysfunctions would come spewing out of the closest that they are now hidden in.

But my point here is to simply say that Gary gave me this special jersey at an age when I was too young to appreciate its special significance (.. that it held for him). Far too young.

He was trying to inspire me to be like him and follow in his footsteps. But this was not the right path for me.

» Football was Big

My brother was all-state middle linebacker both junior and senior years. That helped him get into Yale. Which helped him get into med school .. one of the best med schools in the world.

(If you need a hip replacement, I can get you a good deal.)

My grandma on my dad's side (a grandmother who both Gary and I share) took me to see a high school football game when I was still pretty small.

She was voted Fan-of-the-Year countless times and had a loud-ass cow bell that she would ring whenever our team scored a touchdown. (My hearing hasnt been the same since.) She rarely missed a home game.

But spending the whole afternoon was simply too much for me then. (I have a good memory .. too good, some might say.)

The are many deep family stories that I could explore here .. but I'm too smart for that.

» Birds of a Feather

But I cannot resist telling you that Gary and my dad were tight .. birds of a feather. They spent a lot of time together. They obviously clicked.

So .. the youngest brother here, my dad, formed an alliance of sorts with the eldest son of his eldest brother .. who themselves had the worst of any father-son relationships in our family. (The most dysfunctional.)

Gary's dad was the eldest son. Gary is an eldest son. I am an eldest son. My dad is a youngest son.

Gary and I have different fathers who themselves had the same father .. so we will naturally be subject to many of the same cultural and familial influences. And religious influences. And probably a number of other powerful influences.

See .. the concept of an eldest brother, while you can have many drastic individual differences .. the concept itself still comes with a defined common set of patterns associated with it.

Entire books have been written on the subject of typifications of an eldest son/child, as compared to those of the middle and youngest child. This is because of the similarities of the environments that these children grow up in.

While I never had a sister .. the Wow girl had an older brother. I could feel here applying older-brother patterns onto me .. some that applied and some that didnt.

She was surprisingly comfortable with me very quickly. I dont know if she used her familiar older-brother patterns in order to feel so comfortable with me so quickly .. but I feel intuitively that this is indeed the case. fwiw.

I feel like I am stating the obvious here .. but sometimes the obvious needs to be said. These types of things go deep in a hurry .. so the writer needs to tread with care.

I actually had many conversations along these lines with the Wow girl. She was very smart in this area of family dynamics, and typical patterns represented by an eldest child, and a youngest child, and a middle child.

» I Could See the Wow Girl Using Me as a Proxy for her Older Brother the PhD

The Wow girl, for example, had a single older brother who was my age. I could feel her using me as a proxy for him sometimes.

I could write quite a bit on this topic. I mean, on the subject of a highly-sexual girl using her boyfriend to work-out frustrations and things that she has from her brother. 

I could address this topic on what it feels like from my perspective .. which is really all I have.

And sometimes I will proceed down a certain path further than I normally would .. because I am curious about what things I might find down there.

And this girl was one surprise after another.

My point here with the Wow girl is to say that these family-oriented things operate at a subconscious level .. because they are so deeply ingrained.

That's why you want the first six years of your child's life to be as nurturing as possible with as few traumas as possible.

» When Bro Started Playing High School Football

Cousin Gary lived about a mile down the road. So he was physically close. When bro started playing high school football, cousin Gary and dad would go to his games together.

By comparison, during the three years that I pitched Little League baseball, my dad never went to one of my games. Not even one. And the field was a 2-minute walk away. Maybe three minutes .. in you walk slow.

» Hawaii was the First Place to Feel Like a New Home

[ They did this while I was off turning matter into energy for the military-industrial complex, and going to strip clubs with the Dog in Waikiki, after smoking Maui Wowwie and whatnot.

Hawaii was the first place that felt like home to me after I left home. By then I had already lived in a number of other places, but the combination of time-away-from-home, and time-spent-in-a-new-place made Hawaii feel like home for me.

That was a trippy feeling .. which is why I remember it so well.This was the first time in my life when Connecticut did not feel like my 'home.'

It happened fast as you snapped your fingers. It was not a gradual thing .. like you might imagine.

I was walking home at the time .. toward Diamond Head .. along Ala Wai blvd in Waikiki ..

.. when I was living with the Dog. Right below the two strippers from Vegas.

Note » this section on living in Waikiki has been lifted and moved to its own page » The Moment When the Only Home I had Ever Known Suddenly Felt Foreign (Jan 1, 2018). ]

Bro's high school football team was very good. (They were all on steroids. Bro gave me some juice to try.) They would win like 70-to-nothing.

They looked like a college team coming out against grade-schoolers. They were massive. Their motto was "Undefeated. Untied. Un-scored upon."

» I Am So Far Down this Road and These Fuckers have Already Been Here

As a side note .. anytime you find yourself matching patterns with Dostoevsky, or with the brothers Karamazov .. you know that you are far down one of life's roads.

As I ever press forward into the places that my personal growth takes me to .. I keep noticing patterns that match with those of a number of writers, and their themes.

This is why I have so much respect for people like Nietzsche and Dostoevsky .. because it seems like no matter how far I go, they have already been here.

This is the end of this page. ■

This theme continues here » The Place where Imagination becomes Reality - Page Two (25 Dec 2017).

Return to the page where this entry originated » Are We Really in Love .. or Does it Just Feel that Way? (09 Sept 2017)

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