Xanadu

Four years since my last blogpost.  Sitting here watching Olivia Newton John in one of the worst movies of all time.  A glass of Jack & Coke by my side.  America in flames, the pandemic raging.  A sudden end to my 28 year career on the horizon.  One child in college, one in high school, and two more in little girl ice skating pony world.  A faithful wife asleep in a spacious house in the neiderrhine of east TN.  A blackened soul, struggling toward the light, but a parched earth that rejects the droplets that might otherwise transform.  Each day a question, but that question changed with time from why to what.

There’s something about Xanadu that speaks deeply to man’s soul.  The blonde beauty of the 70’s, bright sparks flying from every corner, youth, hope, and the eternal expulsion of the preceding centuries.  It still feels real, from inside.  But through a more objective lens, from above, God... how sad, how empty.  Those pretty people.  Those bright colors.  Parquet floors and roller skates.  Dead now, or dying.  That ‘40’s juxtaposition of Xanadu captures it beautifully - the dirge of Gene Kelly’s world contretemps to the new wave flash-in-pan. Memento mori.... memento mori.