Philemon

Soundtrack:

Avicii - Hey Brother

“What’s that?” said Phil.

“That’s my blog.  I let people know what I’m up to, and it’s easier than calling everyone,” I said.

“You’re not going to write about me, are you?”

“Probably.  I’m visiting you on my travels, so I’ll write about it,” I said.

“The only way I’ll agree to that is if you make it exciting.  You’ve got to have ninjas and robots.  Put some ODST’s in there too.”

“What’s an ODST?  I don’t know what that is.”

Phil explained, “An ODST, or Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, is an armored soldier dropped in from the sky. Those things are badass. They don’t have them yet in the military; that’s why I didn’t sign up for another tour of duty.”

I paused and stared at him a moment, just to let it sink in.  “Okay, Phil.  I can do that for you.”

Phil and I have known each other since shortly after I was born.  Our mothers put us together, in a very Catholic environment.  We both laugh about our upbringing still to this day.  Phil and my relationship has reinvented itself so many times I’ve lost count.  We’ve been best friends, estranged rivals, acquaintances - we’ve drifted apart and come back so many times.

At this stage it feels like we are old men, and our dreams did not pan out as we thought they would, but we’ve both come to happy terms with that.  We are just content to know each other. Before anyone has a chance to respond to that, saying we are both still young or we don’t know what old is, let me frame that properly for you.  When we were five we both wanted to be superheroes, and thought it was a very plausible thing to accomplish.  We’ve grown and changed our scope since then.

Phil became a soldier in the U.S. Army and served in Afghanistan.  I’ve been working for a spiritual non-profit for 4 years and am working to become a monk.  Some might say we haven’t really grown up that much.  Only he now lives near Dallas, TX and I am moving near San Diego, CA.  The similarities are there as well as the dichotomies.

Which brings us back to Phil requesting robots and ninjas in his story’s retelling.  Who talks like that? Me. I do. I’m the only one I know though, and maybe the people I’ve influenced enough.  It’s like he’s a figment of my imagination. Gasp! Or I’m his!

Here’s what it is.  Sometimes you have friends that really impact you.  They rub off on you so much, and you onto them, that it never goes away.  Even when you keep changing afterward your trajectory is forever affected by that influence.  I have known a lot of people like that, and I still do.  I am grateful for all of them, even the ones where the relationship didn’t end how I wanted it to.

Quick story on driving into Texas.  I called Phil after entering and finding out it would be 300 miles still until I got to his doorway.  He was surprised.  He asked me what highway I was on.  I told him I forgot at the moment as I’d been driving all day and just doing what my GPS told me at that point.  I did offer that as soon as I crossed the state line the highway doubled in size, yet there were vast malls with expensive storefronts and many steakhouses on all sides covering the horizon.  Every highway overpass had the Lone Star seal or the outline of Texas etched into it many times as a gaudy display, reminding visitors where they were and the wealth that it involved.

Phil listened to my description and said, “You just described every single highway entrance into Texas.”

Then an army of robots vs an army of ninjas made war upon the highway.  I would have swerved to avoid them, but luckily, some ODST’s landed and held them back until I could safely make it by.

Brutus and the (Not Really) Giving Tree

The Chronicles of Brutus also continue.  He is getting more adept at road life.  He is almost a full-blooded gypsy by now, in fact.

We did have one hiccup at a gas station on our way out of Texas though.  We let him play in a grassy area, as we do at these rare moments of rest, and he fell in love with a tree.

It was technically in some person’s yard, next to the gas station, so it really wasn’t meant to be no matter how you look at it.  But he hopped straight to the tree and smelled it, he stood there and peed on it a few times, and just held his ground.  Never moving from it’s side, whispering sweet nothings to it while smelling the breeze of this new area.  By the way, everytime we get to a new area or state and let him out, he spends a good five minutes just sticking his nose in the air with his eyes closed, and he smells everything he can as thoroughly as he can.

This time he did all this, glued securely to his tree.  Finally we pried him away.  But just so you don't feel to bad for him, he fell in love with a new tree in New Mexico, but that’s for next time.