Conspiracy of Silence

This afternoon, all of they are optimistic, aroused, and feeling delightful. “And it’s a sunny day!”

As the announcer tells them all, “and a great day for a game,” That none of which will be actually playing.

Each man and his son wondering if this is the day luck will come for him, like it did, once, for someone who it had talked about in a magazine story. Hoping, though hope is a dreadful word, not a person will admit to the hopefulness of catching something so delightfully impossible.

The problem is that the construct of impossible really implies a wrongful act of being hopeful. So, they balance an idea of the self-actualization that is manifested, not projected, by an actual opportunity to catch that thing he, and we doubted, listlessly doubting day after week, after year. 4 days apart each time, and almost every Friday.

Willingness and readiness are a judgment which will break the silence and make them stop holding in their breath. Then, the smacking sound strikes them, which is being felt right through their plastic seats.

Truth be told this display could all be an elaborate ploy. As they feared, the parade of the homecoming queen that happened before the game was merely a set-up to make them smile. Not to make them happy, but just to show others on broadcast-TV they all know how to smile. Look at her, and their capacities to see her. We don't have to let her know we saw her, we just have to play an escapade. That’s all.

Next up they will all lay down their pens and pencils, for a moment, and stop speculating. They stop feeling like the bet will be in their favor anyhow. They all spent too much time realizing worth and now all they have left is to let go, and rationalize the honest fun that it meant. Letting go is truly a beauty, worth something much less than labor but somehow virtuous to the self.

They saw it coming all along. They knew the day they stepped foot into that baby blue Chevy back in 1998 that a tree trunk and a few sodas would be the last of their adventures. The passive foreclosure of their afternoon lurks as shallow as the passive attempts to slow time. The simple act of existing in their seat is only too easy.

It's too easy to feel, by context, and by simply being a bystander any man can let the objects of space junk just fly by them. Fly by and whirling in a perfect spiral of dust and hard leather. All they have to do is sit there. Once the spiral starts down below, they all stand and whirl themselves in place, but the problem is they can’t see the whole field at once; even worse... they can't stop whirling.

A stench of “2-for-Tuesday” vomit in the form of words sort of spiraling in that way they all feel when they drink too much or fall in love. They say to “get real,” as they all turn to each other and coin the term ‘hero’ for stats of the playoff season back in that year of 98’. The fathers will soon turn and tell their sons to have patience. Inning after inning, because patience was the first virtue that any man ever declared, watching an afternoon slowly go by.

And now! In their ever tempting post-speculative world which they navigate through the announcements, and new-age ticker at the tips of their thumbs, the whole world is restless. Their sons need a rest, they declared, and declaring it for all mankind with the breath of all knowledge once had by any man.

How many times can one lesson be learned? Over and over and over… as cigarette smoke brushes their faces and burns their eyes. Their sons will grow to appreciate this game more than their need for a rest, as they age, and feel a strong sense of loss for the moments they have which were robbed mostly from themselves.

How the fuck did mankind end up here in the dungeons that our sidewalk street prophet warned us of?

How did I end up in the rubbish of the things I launched heftily into space in the hopes of someday simply finding the answer to the void? Mostly you, mostly how did you appear in the flash of his matter and disappear with the same vindication you gave on the "virtue of honesty" back to me. Making bets?

Bystanders. They love this afternoon, not in fit of narcissism but in a childlike curiosity to feel the cracking sound in their chairs. Beneath a red throbbing darkness that is lurking in the distance, like a womb and death calling the bright white ball off this earth. How can we blame us for finding it all too alluring?

Like the emerald palace speaking down to them, the event resounds that it is just like the Earth but in the shape of a diamond. They all could have been authors of their own disaster just the same way, but disaster would not have gotten such credit for this day. To say losing a bet is simply nothing, is also really a fallacy I wish I could comprehend. Money for nothing and life experience for the cost of ‘nothing’ in the esoteric cost remains unsurmountable.

Must anyone repent for defaulting? There is no reason to analyze. They said they wish they knew where they had stashed their old glove and spent the whole morning trying to find it ‘for their son.’ Suddenly, and expectantly, they bet again. They are claiming this one is for their son, while defaulting on the one ailment they swore away. It becomes home, nature, and a private place. It's not all bad, to lose the money they bet on their games. Each dollar lost is a reminder for next time, and besides, they are all full of warm beer.

Was it good? Was it great? Did they all just take four hours to screw up the rest of their child's life? Maybe not for their sons, but for the time they have left with father.

One man once spent 28 years on a career, here, while I spent countless nights passively wishing for the stars to fall in line with the years and hit the ball right back into the park. I wanted badly for a flash to wake me up before the instant moment of light that I truly felt alive. The one true tenant in the story remains the self, and the object of concepts and the loves, but mainly that white ball.

We can stay mostly sorry for them. Somehow also stay sorrier for ourselves for this predictable predicament of wishing for what's impossible. They remember what they said when they left home. He, specifically, said he's afraid of what he wanted because it might not happen. Speaking strictly of that out-field miracle for the audience. Any confirmation of its possibility is simply an anecdotal data point. Their son stated he should take failure for cause. He said he was afraid, so to let his arms be vulnerable but yet again vulnerability still has the potential to catch him off guard.

Simultaneously, a lawn-mowing man with his old shoes, sits down on his egg-carton throne to let every neighbor know his old lady is barking as he tunes the dial on his AM radio to the game. The smell of smoke is in that man's garage but it's a different kind of smell than in a plastic seat above the diamond. The announcer on the radio is yelling, yet it's still muffled enough there to hear the garage door motor humming.

“The coach gave the upper hand so willingly to the other team,” he states repeatedly, and not verbatim, but frim in their very seat, still talking about the time his team failed him back in 98. The time he truly started to appreciate the games his father dragged him to year after year, just after he grew old enough to stay awake for a whole nine innings

Sometimes it does work for him to close his eyes and think of it differently. Especially if he is closes them near enough to another source of joy, like his warm beer. Every man will get that which we deserve as consequence to every action, in terms of time, peace and backfire. Maybe striking at his face that very moment he closes his eyes… Noticing the darkness behind his eyelids, as that white ball pierces the roof of the garage like a missile, right from outfield, over the park, and square on the jaw.

It's so easy to recall moments when the strike happened but every silent car ride and disastrous mini-golf game with Dad is a dream swiftly brushing by his memory. He thought his traumatic war was over when he left that world alive in 98’. He thought he had his fill of failure and was ready to choose different, tomorrow. ‘Swore it right from under his plastic seat and all the way up to the bottom of his heart that he had left barking inside.

Nevertheless, it was maybe Fromm who scorned the idea of just falling, and embraced the idea of the object all together. What makes the white ball so different than anything else?

They all watch, still safely in denial about anytime-anyone might have caught that one-in-a-million, by shouting "anything is possible." Fleeting as the daydream can be, so is the sorrow which comes from its sobering reality that it is still simply a sharp-edged and faded dream for viewers at home.

The moment his youth was over was not when he stopped telling himself it's still OK to eat the fruit off the rim of a cocktail glass, or lick wooden spoons after a batch of brownies. But he recalls that the fly ball did actually get caught once by his eyes to the man standing directly next to him in the whole sea of red faces.

...Right next to him.