BROKEN IN MOTION

I was pretty young when I found out that life goes on when you have broken parts. You don't die. You just make it on through with that design flaw.

I crashed my bike into a palm tree and busted my front tooth. As a seven year old, I had to learn to live with the chipped look. And a wobbly front wheel.  

Chip Ocean at seven

By the time I forgot it was there, my grandfather took his vagabond kin to the dentist. Perhaps it was that trip that led me into another dangerous obsession.

That is, now that I had a smile, girls were starting to notice. Me-e-e too. That young ladies had me in their charm radar did not go overlooked, and I liked it. Suddenly there were a lot more smiles mapping my face. They just naturally popped up since I had become much more involved in that other kind of human body.

Fascinating.

As was my visit to the sacred shrine of magic --the limitless  landscape within a building of no boundarys, the source of MY SONGS, the sounds of my burgeoning world, my first real live radio station!

Didn't take me long -- how long is an instant? -- to discover I had the same stuff in my blood as these broadcast carnies in theirs, both these veterans and this newbie - pulled and motivated to plunk the harp strings of imagination.

Again, I was hooked. Life continued. The hits kept coming.

One by one, these steep attractions have allowed me to realize that life goes on after important parts get busted up. The palm tree had its turn. The girls had their spells. Radio used what it needed then sold out to the highest bidder.

Well, THAT all hurt. Surprising, but, OK; they get to each make their own choices.

Tree was just being tree wen it met my bicycle. The girls, and I, were just chasing dreams that, by now, we have watched evaporate before our very highest hopes.

And, if I wanted more from the radio stations, perhaps I should have purchased one myself. I did not. Owners can do with their property whatever they choose.

All of them still in motion. And, gone, all of them, gone.


I can still hear the songs, see old photos, feel the experiences, almost smell them, but they have slipped beyond my clutches.

One by one, these things that had such an impact, in and on my consciousness, have shown me their temporal nature, the transitory way of all things in motion outside in the realm of perception. They keep moving. Like an object in an orbit, they can't help it. Just like these "Once Upon A Times," either can you and I; all of us - still in motion.

Each episode in its time left a lesson in passing: One goes on, just as these precious increments in our stories have, just as the songs do. Even though such an intrinsic part is fragmented - as a heart.  

But it still beats, cares, even loves. Maybe it's not really broken, as in beyond repair, but instead, is in motion, collecting itself and evolving. ...readying itself for what's next.  

I am.
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