The river is beside me (to my left) and the city rises way up tall beside the other me (to my right). At times I feel divided into two equal parts but those are times when I’m either at my very best or some 30% below average thing. Staring straight ahead I see the big face of my good friend and wonder to myself, how much he is the father who raised him? And how different do we all become under these bloody conditions, family and all. But I’m me today and there’s a river flowing very closely so I must pay attention.
I strut these two men like a ballroom dance along the Ohio and find a frighteningly large amount of confidence begin to make its way to the surface of me. I look down at the dirty muddy sidewalk and my eyes trace on towards river water that is full of sticks and leaves and random pieces of random other things. The water is brackish, brown, filthy from what I can only imagine has been centuries of steady exposure to life’s brilliant waste.
My friend is a good man. I’d like to think that I am only friends with good men but at times after some thinking I think that well maybe a few of those good men I know and am friends with are capable of doing bad things or maybe just doing things that most other good men would deem to be drawing the line for entry into the good man club and if so they’re not good men and really not even good friends of mine because I do anchor most of my belief in these relationships on my ability to, with a high degree of certainty, know I am in simple cahoots with good men. But yeah my friend right here is a good man, this one I know of. He’s a straight shooter like a long Kansas road or the flight off to Europe or even the size and price of the toothpaste you want you know he’s good for it. And I shouldn’t even be discussing the prospect of faulty labels given to other men’s status around a good man like this. In all situations we are at the Olympic Games. The trials were far back in our history and the story continues from a place of mutual qualifications and clear rules. A good man does indeed allow for things to happen rather frictionless. I think maybe the best part apart being in relation with a good man is the obvious intentionality of the interactions. One never questions what’s going on behind the mask because there is no mask. And even if there is a thin layer of masking it doesn’t matter much because they’re in the moment and present and don’t give off this whole inner world burning thing that all non good men exude with painfully obvious ignorance.
I turn around and now the river is beside me (to my right) and the city rises way up taller still beside the other me (to my left). My good friend’s face is now behind me and I am no longer able to summon up that promising goodness within him that I just hurried on about. I wonder if he is just this image of who I want him to be and when I see him all these high value descriptors come crashing onto him like magnets and if when he’s out of sight I may return to the same doubts I have about my other good friends who are not here upon this dirty sidewalk and dirty water with me. I should really lighten up I guess. But I’m a good man. And I just can’t let my life become one involved with too many who aren’t. So yeah. Let me think of all this a bit and take it very seriously.
