The “Will Tell” Overture

This is the overture to my own memoirs of sort. My own million little pieces with less, at least intentional, fiction. It’s titled The Thrill of Hope, a Soundtrack of Quiet Desperation. 

That is the crossroads I seem to have lived my life in. The ancient idea that there remains, faith, hope and love. I will share my Faith both in lower and upper case, share where I have failed and been failed at by what I believe in. I will disclose that somewhere I am still an eternal romantic.  I believe in love, both the feeling and the principle seem to be always so tantalizing close but I never quite arrive; I’ve been twice divorced both by women I promised my life to and both at their request. Maybe I’m just in ‘love with love and the idea of something binding us together.’ While the ancient text says the greatest of these is love, I’ve not achieved greatness in it. 

But ultimately my biggest driving force has been hope, something I’ve long referred to as my four letter word, though other 4 letter words will be used in here. Like Aristotle said, hope is my waking dream. So here I want to share the thrills it has and still gives me. 

When I was younger, I thought it took one of two qualities to keep a diary or a journal. One had to have an absolutely huge ego and think that one’s life mattered enough to write it down or one had to have such a lack of self esteem that writing it down allowed expression that no one would care about anyway. Neither are the impetus for this as my bouts of low self esteem are rare since I have been labeled with arrogance almost as a personality trait. I was a little boy who wanted to be a preacher and failed at it almost as early as I arrived. I am a man who has outlived a brain cancer prognosis whose 10 year survival is 12%. I got it after I was 30 and I’m 42 as I start this writing. This will tie those two big narratives together more methodically but also put in the stories that really have nothing to do with either, just sharing my life.

I actually passed a book deal several years ago, I don’t quite get why strangers would care. But the idea of writing down more, the thought doesn't stop nagging, it has been heard for its much speaking. Who ever reads this should copyright the cure for insomnia. Wait should I do that quick, like right now? If you’re reading this, you may actually care or just have quite the morbid curiosity.

The Thrill of Hope, a Soundtrack of Quiet Desperation comes off as a loaded title. It is. However, from the start I want to accept the premise that life is not fair. That reality is the cause of our frustrations, yet in the pursuit to make it more just, or at least to make it more advantageous in our direction instead of against us, that pursuit makes many of us thrill with hope. 

The subscript is a reference to the famous quote that most men live lives of quiet desperation. I have spent too much of life feeling desperate. Desperate for meaning, hope, love, joy, happiness, peace, relief, any of those on some days, all of them on others. They come to my in inklings, a wave which rushes almost over me but doesn’t quite engulf me, distant smells which tantalize me but still elude; I can’t fully taste them. But a soundtrack by its very definition cannot be quiet. Every section will be named for a song, some just because they’re so obvious and some nods that maybe no one except me will get but hey it’s the soundtrack of my life. 

At times, this quiet desperation is for me deafeningly silent. Is this a true story? Not exactly since it is my only my memories which, like a dream, my mind narrates into a story. No human mind remembers things perfectly much less one that literally has had a tumor and a biopsy and a surgery in the memory part of the left temporal lobe. I don't know where truth makes it bed but it doesn't sleep exclusively with me. Speaking of sleeping exclusively with me, the stories of the women in my life will be told in ways that would disappoint much of society including those in my religious upbringing but they have been huge factors and shift points in my life. This is shared from that perspective so its not shared to be tantalizing but to be revealing of my what was, perhaps my what if’s. 

It is my story told as true and as painstakingly honest as I can render it knowing I cannot escape my own biases. Anyone who in the story in a good or bad light, be assured this says more about me than it ever could about them. Last but not least, this is not a morality tale. I'm not going anywhere with it. I don’t know the point to life but I’ve learned a few points along the way. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I'm trying to...