.... and the band played on, but no one was there to hear, much less listen
Friends, and others who follow the nonsense I write here, those who know me, and those who don't, I say to you all... "Feel free to mature, to grow up in the ways that seem appropriate to you, to live and to learn... but growing old is something to avoid if at all possible."
I've been away from the house I "live" in for a week now. It was meant to be maybe three days. All that I wished to do has been washed away - leaving little but a sense of "What now, Purple Cow?" or some other doggerel ending with thoughts of "rather see than be one" or "Snark? You should be so lucky..."... or maybe it's just, well, something else.
I'm sitting in a dark hotel room; kids asleep, The Compubear drifting in and out of a physically uncomfortable sort of lseep, worrying about passing her insurance test at around noon so she will have SOMETHING to be able to do and fall back on as life, the multiverses, and whatever else is out there gets ready to do its unpredictable best to prove Mrs. Murphy's Law - to wit: "My husband is a damned optimist."
I've known some of it has been coming for a long time. The problem with that, of course, is that no one expects subtlety from me when they deal with me... Sort of like the one time I truly treasured being a real Fan GoH at an early MileHiCon. I got up to do the obligatory "FanGoH Speech" and short-circuited their plans by doing it open, honest, and (shudder) "straight from the heart." The concom had expected me to do my punny best, using some of what they had heard me "practicing", and I almost did that - until I realized that being there actually MEANT something to someone ... ME. And, to be totally truthful, a couple of others who had pushed the (at that time) "almost break even" con to ask me to be there to thank me for working my a** off for Denvention. Some of those people were long-time real friends who told me that they really wanted me there, and could I come, because while they could do most of the amenities one would expect as a "GoH" (room, banquet, membership, etc.) they just couldn't afford to get me AND my family there --- and they KNEW that while I might WORK a con "solo", I didn't go to one without all of my family, including the "extendeds" and such. They offered me partial plane fare, or care fare if I drove, from Phoenix to Denver.
Obviously, I accepted, and had one of the best times of MY life -- for me it was almost the 1st time I'd not gone to a con to work it... tho I worked it a somewhat different way, playing music, spending time with people I'd never met, playing more music, singing people who were too hyped to know what they were getting into to sleep, introducing some people who were to become well-known filkers and musicians to filk music, folk music, and just being themselves.
And I blew the "gag" they had planned FOR me... with them sitting a few rows back with paper plates marked with "Olympic-Styled" numbers to "rate" the puns, jokes, etc. I didn't even give them a chance to use them, though to this day I still feel that, with one exception, they preferred the "thank you for thinking enough of me to bring us here to thank me for being me" to the dumb puns I had in reserve.
So, for this one, quiet moment, thank you all for having me here. For reading my silly one-line responses to things ... and my thousand liners. For laughing - and crying - with me over happies and sads, harpies and forever-kittens, life, the universe, and - by gosh - everything. I've had friends I never knew I had Like Gnurss From Out the Voodvurk Come (if you haven't read the "Papa Shimmelhorn" chronicles, please do, dated but still good for laughs because some things, like we "dirty old men", never change). Thank you for knowing who I am, in some ways, and still putting up with me. Thank you for not laughing AT someone who has cried on your respective shoulders as his world slowly got
smaller and smaller.
Thank you for loving my children, sometimes almost as much as I do, and treating them as part of your world, too. Thank you for all that - and so much more - that I may have appeared to have taken for granted... I really didn't - really.
And now to sleep, I hope, perchance to dream,
of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings,
of clicking my heels together, and saying "there's no place like home"
and knowing, somehow, that when you look to the rainbow, there is always
the chance of finding it, at last, in your own, true-love's eyes.
And, if that wasn't enough of a montage, from enough places obvious and obscure, good night anyway, as that is all I am capable of at this moment in time, and from this location in space.
I've been away from the house I "live" in for a week now. It was meant to be maybe three days. All that I wished to do has been washed away - leaving little but a sense of "What now, Purple Cow?" or some other doggerel ending with thoughts of "rather see than be one" or "Snark? You should be so lucky..."... or maybe it's just, well, something else.
I'm sitting in a dark hotel room; kids asleep, The Compubear drifting in and out of a physically uncomfortable sort of lseep, worrying about passing her insurance test at around noon so she will have SOMETHING to be able to do and fall back on as life, the multiverses, and whatever else is out there gets ready to do its unpredictable best to prove Mrs. Murphy's Law - to wit: "My husband is a damned optimist."
I've known some of it has been coming for a long time. The problem with that, of course, is that no one expects subtlety from me when they deal with me... Sort of like the one time I truly treasured being a real Fan GoH at an early MileHiCon. I got up to do the obligatory "FanGoH Speech" and short-circuited their plans by doing it open, honest, and (shudder) "straight from the heart." The concom had expected me to do my punny best, using some of what they had heard me "practicing", and I almost did that - until I realized that being there actually MEANT something to someone ... ME. And, to be totally truthful, a couple of others who had pushed the (at that time) "almost break even" con to ask me to be there to thank me for working my a** off for Denvention. Some of those people were long-time real friends who told me that they really wanted me there, and could I come, because while they could do most of the amenities one would expect as a "GoH" (room, banquet, membership, etc.) they just couldn't afford to get me AND my family there --- and they KNEW that while I might WORK a con "solo", I didn't go to one without all of my family, including the "extendeds" and such. They offered me partial plane fare, or care fare if I drove, from Phoenix to Denver.
Obviously, I accepted, and had one of the best times of MY life -- for me it was almost the 1st time I'd not gone to a con to work it... tho I worked it a somewhat different way, playing music, spending time with people I'd never met, playing more music, singing people who were too hyped to know what they were getting into to sleep, introducing some people who were to become well-known filkers and musicians to filk music, folk music, and just being themselves.
And I blew the "gag" they had planned FOR me... with them sitting a few rows back with paper plates marked with "Olympic-Styled" numbers to "rate" the puns, jokes, etc. I didn't even give them a chance to use them, though to this day I still feel that, with one exception, they preferred the "thank you for thinking enough of me to bring us here to thank me for being me" to the dumb puns I had in reserve.
So, for this one, quiet moment, thank you all for having me here. For reading my silly one-line responses to things ... and my thousand liners. For laughing - and crying - with me over happies and sads, harpies and forever-kittens, life, the universe, and - by gosh - everything. I've had friends I never knew I had Like Gnurss From Out the Voodvurk Come (if you haven't read the "Papa Shimmelhorn" chronicles, please do, dated but still good for laughs because some things, like we "dirty old men", never change). Thank you for knowing who I am, in some ways, and still putting up with me. Thank you for not laughing AT someone who has cried on your respective shoulders as his world slowly got
smaller and smaller.
Thank you for loving my children, sometimes almost as much as I do, and treating them as part of your world, too. Thank you for all that - and so much more - that I may have appeared to have taken for granted... I really didn't - really.
And now to sleep, I hope, perchance to dream,
of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings,
of clicking my heels together, and saying "there's no place like home"
and knowing, somehow, that when you look to the rainbow, there is always
the chance of finding it, at last, in your own, true-love's eyes.
And, if that wasn't enough of a montage, from enough places obvious and obscure, good night anyway, as that is all I am capable of at this moment in time, and from this location in space.