Los Angeles, CA
We friends stood beneath a cold night and uncorked the festivities in a grand toast to the bare, wood-floor house out on Melrose and Western.
—
December winds roll in and it’s that most wonderful time of year as Tim Tebow wins another game for the once hopeless Denver Broncos. He’s now 6-1 as a starter. Weeks ago they were calling him overhyped, some kind of lost cause that would only be remembered as a college champion at the University of Florida.
I remember those days when he stood as the gleaming triumph of the Florida Gators with his brother-in-arms Percy Harvin, the omnipresent running back. Today they’re old friends, who faced off this afternoon in a different world. Harvin’s now a star back with the Minnesota Vikings, who, like Tebow, tries to revive a slugging team looking for some kind of leader.
But this is the twenty-first century fellas. These are all businesses looking out for profit first, and it’s about time you did the same. You can’t be pulling the chains for an organization. Gotta look out for number one.
I wonder if Tebow’s got it in him to be the ruthless kind that dominates today’s arena of professional sports. How long is that boy’s-scout mentality gonna last him? The whole “I give it everything I’ve got, day after day” bit?
I went to school with these guys. A part of me wants to tell them that the world’s got no room for us and it’s done with idealism. Don’t they know Kennedy was killed? Don’t they see Obama’s numbers, man? You guys might survive. God knows you’re doing it so far. And me? An aspiring artist looking for something sleeping and undefinable in an accelerating, indeed increasingly uncertain time? Yea, who knows. Where we gonna be come the great turn? Maybe I’ll see you fellas in 2013. Maybe I won’t.
But this is December, when strange dreams are put to rest in some kind of symphony with the falling snow, as we look toward the elemental truths that lie in good company and faithful friends. So drink a cup my friends, we say, and wait for those dreams to rise once more. Reborn in the new year. And 2012 stands alone and still like a quiet, stone giant.
-Jude
Ren Michael 