I'm Younger Than That Now

Where do original thoughts come from? Or, rather, where do the words come from that express the sentiment and truth that is inherent in every soul? The feeling that glues us all together and wonders and despairs at our fellows who roam outside of this gentle umbrella to feed on the carcasses of the weak and the sick?

In my dotage, I fear for the future, but am heartened by children, though I tear the decal off the top of my new baseball hat and gently curve the bill, though my blue jeans fit snugly (perhaps a bit too much) just below my belly button, despite my tendency to judge ladies and gentlemen by their inclination toward the designated hitter.

Oh yes, original thoughts. Are there any? Perhaps only scientists possess them. Lawyers rely on case law. Doctors refer to symptoms to diagnose what has been diagnosed in the past. Baseball managers call in the closer when up by a run in the 9th inning. The head coach orders a “prevent defense” in the waning moments of a one-score game. Writers usher in dramatic plot points to their screenplays. These are all things the prudent woman or man does.

How little does art imitate life. Life cares not a whit for the artistic spins we may desire to put on it, which may be why we love art so much. It must be an immense disappointment to the artist that all crumbles in his mighty effort to wring meaning out of this vale of tears. There, I just tried to make a sow’s ear into a silk purse!

But narratives persist. Even those outside of our lovely, late-empire American orbit have a story. The last few days have been filled with milestones. The killings at Columbine High School in Colorado (where an ex-girlfriend went to school), the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City (across the street from where I spent my journalism apprenticeship), and one good thing, the Oklahoma land rush of 1889, an event that defines the American belief in the future.

OK (no pun intended), I am a prisoner of my past, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now (thanks, Bob Dylan; original thoughts belong to others).

Here's another one that stirs me to look to tomorrow. Fitzgerald, disproving my original conceit that art can't illuminate, wrote in an otherwise undistinguished story called The Swimmers: "France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter--it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart."


Which gives me that incurably optimistic outlook peculiar to Americans. Tony La Russa, despite having been found passed out, or something , at the wheel last year, has turned managing my Redbirds into a concerto, befuddling the Jerry Manuels who are reporters’ favorites but rely on folks who won’t slide because they might get hurt. Hey, Jerry, give it up. Put Sheffield in the lineup while he still has some pop.

Miss Market has been too kind to me lately. Goldman Sachs upgraded Ford and it soared. Faith in Palm’s new smart phone has kept it marching higher. Advanced Micro Devices advances and retreats but is still in the green as the semiconductor cycle looks to turn. Stay with them all, but don't confuse art with life.