ah, the sound of football...

gently playing in the background, like muzak that starts in autumn and ends in a coliseum in january.

it's inevitable that sundays are taken over by football. television viewing migrates to jamaica and we get peyton manning and randy moss and chris berman, who could. go. all. the. way.

at least i've been with dan long enough to understand the basics--what's a tackle and what's a sack, the fine line between first down and fourth. the touchback. etc.

i couldn't watch a game on my own and get the same joy out of it that dan does, because half the fun of watching football is seeing dan go nuts when there's a touchdown, or play sofa-ref alongside the striped guys onscreen. watching football, just me, myself and i, is somewhat silly, in my mind.

perhaps it's how i was raised. sunday football games were for dad and some guys from the neighborhood. the smell of sour cream and onion dip, potato chips, crisp grain belt beer in cans. we always asked for a sip, and then ran away making faces after the nastiness that was beer made our mouths rebel.

course now i type this having watched football yesterday, beer in hand. strange how eternal life is, in its own circle.

i've been so focused lately on my own mortality, on when the end will happen, for my own life. and then i think about history, how many people have lived and died and lived again, through their children, their contributions to humanity in books and movies and music and thought. i see kids in the world and i think about how, fifteen years from now, they'll be in my shoes, seeing the world through glasses tinted with time--how much time is left? how much? can i forget, day to day, that eventually this whole existence of mine will be for naught, that someday i'll be gone?

it doesn't bother me. i'm not scared of dying. it's the inevitability of it--there's nothing i can do, nothing i can say to avoid it. that part's not scary. it's the thought that i'm not giving anything to the earth at large, nothing of substance.

but if spirit is substance, if your soul has weight, then i give willingly.

i think of christian ideals, of christ saying "take of this body" and as i age understanding that it's not the body he was giving, but the idea of his spirit. or at least that's my take on it. doesn't make me christian any more than agreeing with my uncle makes me a member of the nra; just makes me realize that it's all interconnected. reminds me of the fates, sitting at the loom, weaving lives together, tying them off in neat knots.

behind me the annual festival of men in tight pants chasing dyed pigskin continues, the announcers debate and the commercials ensue, asking me to consider different car insurance while i'm on the planet. it's like my own version of continuation, at this exact moment. it'd go on with or without me, football. the nfl keeps turning. the football in the sky. etcetera.

my existentialist needs to shower. ta-ta, ya'll.