by LJ Frank

It’s not that I haven’t been game. I have. I have done things spontaneously like jumping out of plane at a height that I now wonder, what was I thinking? Or, experiencing a nude bicycle jaunt across town in the middle of the pack and chilling my butt. Or, relaxing behind a stage curtain waiting to introduce an eminent astronomer I chatted with about wormholes and making contact with alien civilizations. Or, the time aboard a ship I was crossing the South China Sea when a fellow crew member was washed overboard during a storm with whom I discussed the meaning of life the night before. Or trekking across a desert in a dilapidated bus; stopped and briefly interrogated by armed soldiers of a cause and walking off with another person toward a city in the distance. Or, the late evening sitting in a bar listening to a yet to be famous trumpet player’s soulful jazz. Or, the time spent flying in a sputtering twin-engine propeller plane above a slow-moving muddy river snaking through thick wooded terrain and landing in what looked like a runway converted from a pasture of sorts.

I’m game. Like when I parked a hundred yards at the far end of a sparsely filled parking lot and a man wearing a Brioni business suit that should’ve have been classier slammed into the side of my used four-cylinder sports car and sped away in his license plate-less premium X model pick up truck. Or, listening to the earnest appearing chatter of political shape-shifters and business do-gooders in legislative chambers, board rooms and on the social media interested in self-expression of financial interests or assuaging their narcissism while trimming the projected fat off of others and suggesting people should look benevolently upon them. Or, sitting in a pew, watching strangers with caffeine smiles worshiping a messiah they never physically met but with a metaphysical promise of eternal salvation as the gods of war on their only planet worthy of saving, was and are busy at work.

I remain game. Like driving across plateau at high-speed when a smiling officer of someone else’s law followed me to a gas station then approached to offer me a ticket to attend a banquet honoring him. Or, thirty years ago at a relatively young age, a long red-haired woman who performed my tarot card reading said really good things were in store for me but I needed to be patient as I was also a Saturday’s child along with being a Libra. Beauty, balance and a wealthy spirit arrive with age and an edge.

I’m still game and certainly not above it all. I wasn’t born into riches or with connections, a network or the implants of troubled honesty needed to manipulate in the name of the fathers of capitalism and competition, rather, my true vital source a Hindu woman once suggested, was that I was rich in experience and a silver spoon for my mouth is purchasable. She noted that a smile would eventually become a proverb for me like the brightness of the moonlight shimmering across the Bay of Bengal at night.

So with a grin and still game, taking chances here and there with the life allotted to me through happenstance and opportunity, eyes and mind wide open, to recognize serendipitous moments where my inner voice suggests “at last” all the while traversing the country’s geography for coffee shops in search of mysterious blends to sip while tasting morsels of pumpkin bread.