Broken Glasses

Monday May 2nd, 2011 - Chicago, IL

   My brain is still aching from all this Osama Bin Laden mumbo jumbo. What’s the truth and do we really want to know it? It doesn’t add up in my head no matter how I dissect it, and it makes me feel disillusioned about our world in general. Are we rotten to the core?

   I know I’m naïve, but I don’t want to believe that. There are good people in the mix, but it seems like they never get any real power to make a difference on a large scale. Is that it, or do seemingly good people get in positions of power and then switch to the dark side?

   Who can say? I have no idea what’s right anymore and it really bothers me. As kids, we are taught to put our faith in God and country and that’s all we’ll need. Things will work themselves out for the best and good will eventually win - with liberty and justice for all.

   Maybe I got the wrong message, but that’s what it sounded like to me. Just have faith in the man upstairs and the stars and stripes, and everything will be Hershey bars and Archie comics in the end. For a long time, I believed it. Now I feel like I’ve been hornswoggled.

   I do want to love America, or at least what I was taught to believe it was all about, but it feels like that ideal is no longer in place. Was it ever? I sure hope so, because it’s quite an amazing concept on paper - but then again so is communism. It’s being executed in actual time where the glitches happen, and it’s always due to human error. A few always spoil it.

   Who’s got time to sort all this out? Not me. I’ve got more than enough dents in my own can and glaring faults to fix to keep me busy for the foreseeable future and then some. I’m finding it enough of a challenge trying to make it through the day to day obstacles of life.

   One of those happened tonight at Zanies in Chicago where I was hosting the Rising Star Showcase. I had the nightmare situation come up of having my glasses crushed, and that’s a major deal in my world. I’ve always worn glasses off stage, but never on. Before I go up I try to find an out of the way hiding place for them. Once in a great while I’ll screw it up.

   Tonight was the night. I put my glasses on top of my CD case and then on top of a shelf that sits near the sound booth. Zanies is a tiny club and there aren’t many other places I’d be able to put them and feel safe. Plus, I’ve hidden them there before without a problem.

   I don’t think I had ever put my CD case there though, and for whatever reason my specs ended up on the floor with both lenses popped out and the rest mangled beyond repair. I’ll never put them there again, but it’s too late now. I need my glasses for driving, so I pieced them back together the best I could. Tomorrow I’ll have to find time to go get a new pair.

   That’s going to have to include an eye exam, as it’s been a long time since I’ve had one. I’ll probably need bifocals, trifocals and get matched up with a seeing eye dog, but I knew this was coming eventually. I just didn’t plan for it now. It does seem kind of symbolic in a way. Both my inner and outer eyes are getting a check up. I hope I’ll see things clearly.

Posted via email from Dobie Maxwell's "Dented Can" Diary