He liked it to be new.
He liked to start over so it would be new again and he'd have a fresh start.
In the beginning anything is possible.
He liked to begin. He liked to be possible.
I don't remember what he did for a living but I remember he hated his jobs. I remember jokes about cubicles and mindless meetings where nothing was new and nothing was possible. He'd leave one company for another, doing whatever it is that he did. He was always looking. Interviewing. Resigning.
He was always looking for a new apartment. One closer to the city. One cheaper. On a quieter block. A new place. A fresh start.
He was always trading in his cars. Bigger. Better. A convertible. A classic.
He'd break up with her so they could begin again. But eventually it couldn't be new. Eventually, it was her again. And that wasn't anything's possible. Eventually she wasn't a beginning.
Inevitably, she was part of a pattern.
I kept in touch with her until she moved away, before email and texts and blogs and twitter, back in 1992 when it was like we were all Amish. He didn't like patterns. And then she was gone.
I think for a while some of us thought he was brave. Some of us thought it was brave to begin again.
But the eventual and inevitable made too many agains. He never gave things a chance to work. He never knew how a story could end.
He never got to the place where you know all the Words by heart,
And you're sitting shoulder to shoulder on the hood of somebody's car,
Sharing a bag of chips and watching the setting sun or a ball game.
In a breeze, in a whisper,
In the things that don't matter.
In the things that just are.
Like your oldest Levi's - faded, worn, and broken-in.
The real work is in the middle. The real work is in getting there.
The real work wasn't in buying the damn jeans. It was in keeping them all this time.
The time - that allowed those dungarees to become your favorites.
He never built any equity.
He was never vested.
And eventually, neither were we.
"Ridin' high, when I was king.
Played it hard and fast, 'cause I had everything."
-Beggin', by Madcon
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