Jack

by on January 12, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I was thirty going on a hundred when my world came to an end. The world I loved. Yosemite fell and killed my parents. I sat down in a chair in my mom’s hospital room and didn’t stand up again. I was done. Everything I cared about was gone, I had nothing to live for, and I just stopped. Then they came back for me. You gave them different names, but they will always be Julie and Alex to me. The best girls in all the worlds. The ones that got away. They did what no doctor or psychiatrist could ever do. They came back for me in my darkest hour, they put me back together, and then they sent me out to do what I had to do.

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Jack

by on January 11, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I was eighteen going on thirty and my world had come apart. The great loves of my life were gone, and I was too proud to go after them. They would come back. I knew it in my bones. No place was as good as Northern Minnesota to live. They would come back tomorrow. Next week. Next month. Next year. I graduated and went to college where I majored in music and beer and girls that weren’t them. Because they hadn’t come back. I never did move on. Yes, there were girls, but none held a candle to them. And I never did leave to follow them, because that would have required me admitting I was wrong. So I never moved on. I just convinced myself I was happy. That I loved my life. That it was Heaven on Earth. And it was. God help me, it was. I never wanted to leave that place. I loved it all.

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Rising Sun

by on January 10, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Michael Crichton is a perennial favorite author of mine. I have read many of his books over my life, from my teenage years until now, and I recently went back to reread one of the old and good ones that I first read a good three decades ago. Rising Sun mixes a murder, a cover up, a whodunit, and a travelog all in one. It is impossible to read a Crichton book without learning something, even when it is a reread. It’s really just an amazing book, and is just as relevant now as it was when it was written. Crichton wrote timeless stories, and we are a poorer world without him writing more of them now. I loved it again, just as much as I loved it before.

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Jack

by on January 9, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

It was three short years that changed a life. We sang, we played, and we danced. We made beautiful music together in Northern Minnesota. We made Heaven on Earth, and that was all I wanted for the rest of my life. They wanted to be bigger. They wanted to go to Nashville and go worlds wide. I knew they were good enough to do it, so I let them go. I thought they would get a taste of it, make a name for themselves, and then come back home to make more beautiful music together. They thought I would follow them and we would be together out there. We were all wrong.

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Jack

by on January 8, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I tell people that I am happy with my life. I am. I tell people that I wouldn’t change anything. I tell myself the same thing. But that is a lie. It took me a long time to come to terms with that. It took a long time for me to face that fact and accept it. It took a long time for me to admit the truth to myself. And to them. I let them go. The best things in my life, the best girls in all the worlds, and I let them go alone. That is my one true regret in life. I would go back and change it if I could. I have no idea what I would be now if I did. Maybe I would be dead, along with everybody I cared about. But I would have spent my life with the girls I loved more than life itself. And that would have been a life worth living.

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