"I'm curious like a cat -- I have a couple of friends that call me whiskers."
That could sums it up right there -- whiskers -- and there is something sitting across from someone in a controlled environment that allows for both parties the rare opportunity to tell your story, speak your passion, bare your soul. I'd say that we need opportunities like these now more than ever. The world isn't getting any simpler and life doesn't seem like it's slowing down anytime soon -- these conversations are my therapy and I hope that my guests something of the same about the podcast. After the headphones come off, I am amazing and humbled by how many people say -- "that was a lotta fun." Like before a game or an event -- I get butterflies before every podcast and butterflies are a sign that you're leaning in the right direction -- the direction of your soul.
Billy 2-Guns: OG pod pic!
I hope this gives you a little glimpse why I love podcasting -- why when I am having a bad day, I turn to the podcast -- why if I am board or don't know what to do that I open the laptop and attempt to create -- why multiple guests have helped me on my path of life -- conversations that have come at the exact time that I needed that particular conversation -- giving me the nudge or ephiphany at the right time or even when I least expected it. For all of this I am thankful from the bottom of my heart!
And if you would like to know a little more about me, when in graduate school at Catholic University and asked to write about your first 18 years of life in six pages -- I took the whole spring and this is what came out . . . . .
PS -- Please let me know if it made as much sense as it did to me when I wrote it!
Hello, World!
You know how I like to make an entrance.
– Will Smith from Independence Day
The world is not black and white it is a panoply of a rainbow of color. Everything and everybody can be found not in bubbles, but on a beautiful human spectrum of snowflakes and fingerprints. That is about as close I can tread to an absolute. An absolute, for given time, there are absolutely an infinite number of shades, infinite color, infinite possibilities for life. All the world is a rainbow and in between ROY G BIV — the colors of the 🌈 — there lies another rainbow and in between the colors of that rainbow — the rainbow within the rainbow — there exists another rainbow all on a spectrum — ad astra, ad infinitum. This vague understanding and on the spectrum of punctuality, I skew late — and on a recent podcast this is why I can think why. In 1998 I was a Junior in high school trying to get into a “good” college. During this process my mom and dad and I thought it a good idea to test for ADD, and lo-and-behold I was diagnosed and began a regiment of ritalin to jack up my attention. Philip is a great friend of mine and years later while waxing philosophic, a favorite pastime of ours, Philip called my brain divergent. I didn’t know how to take that, so after counting to 10, I asked Philip to explain. seemingly far-flung ideas or concepts and relate them to one-another – like an analogy, metaphor, or simile. Phil was right – I was good at these comparisons and would employ them often – especially when working with kids. And to put the ADD piece alongside the divergent brain – it could make sense that I was ADD because of my natural inclination of my brain to work divergently – like a butterfly flitting from one idea to the next, searching high and low – hoping for their union. I don’t think it is a stretch to say the divergent brain trends ADD and ADD trend late – we are too busy butterflying! So in 1981 with a due date of birth in early August, it makes sense that I left my mom to enter the world on August 25 – three weeks late (and three happened to turn into my lucky number – who knows!?)
In the beginning of most things it can be very important as well as chaotic, and while I am sure there was chaos in the beginning of my life through infancy I couldn’t tell you – all I felt and remember was love – lots of love from mom and dad, which helped to plant the seeds of faith and trust in the world and its people. Erik Erickson's second stage of psychosocial development is early childhood which spans the ages of 2 – 4. Having experienced a loving infancy and with a solid foundation for trust, early childhood is a time for exploration of their rapidly growing bodies and their relationship to the world that they inhabit. In early childhood little boys and girls go mobile – watch out world! And with this new-found freedom begins the universal quest for discovery and autonomy. Mom and dad were both heavily involved in my early childhood – with mom ever the nurturer and dad ever the supporter. I remember being in my dad’s workshop and thinking working with his hands and with wood was so cool – I wanted to do that – I wanted to make walking-sticks, clocks, tables, chairs, pine-wood derby cars – I wanted to be like dad. I would also mow the yard behind my father – following his path with my little orange mower – I wanted to be like dad. And with the cutting of both wood and grass there is that smell – two of the best smells in my olfactory estimation. Maybe it was in these two different yet similar activities of cutting that my affinity of smelling everything came from?! Everything I smelled and I still do – pleasant or putrid – I was curious so I smelled it. My mom says I got it from my Uncle Jim – maybe it was genetic, or maybe I picked it up from my dad while doing cool things!
When I was 2 ½ and on January 30 of 1984, my sister was born and little Billy got a partner in crime in beautiful baby Linda. I feel like I have always bent toward compassion – compassion has always been in my nature – sometimes hiding, sometimes not, yet always present! As far back as high school, I remember enjoying working with kids. I was working a camp one summer and by strength of applause I was voted counselor of the week. Even though I may not have known it at the time, compassion, especially expressed toward children, has always been in me – and like the body and the mind and given the luxury of time, my compassion grew. However, as anything cannot be 100% purely itself, this compassion is not all altruistic. Dave Matthews said, “When you give, you begin to live.” Being around children is like being around unfettered truth, and in trying to help and guide them in this world, you get some of their truth. To work with kids is to deal in the currency of truth. In the gospels three’s are one of those numbers and in my all time favorite gospel passage, Jesus deals in three as he deals in truth – children as the pathway to heaven:
Amen I say to you: unless you conform your heart to that of the heart of a child you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this, welcomes me.
– Matthew 18: 3–5
Fresh out of college and as a young teacher, I would hit the town with a friend group that mostly consisted of old high school buddies – DC can kinda be like that with many boomeranging back to the area after college. This was a very fun time in my life as well as a time to determine if I still fit in with my old friends after colleges apart. I was the only person of my friend-group to be called to education and not knowing many other teachers, we wound up going out and hanging out with mostly my friends’ friends. Often the next morning after a night out, mom would unfailingly ask – who I saw, what jobs they did they have, and what everyone was doing with their lives. 
Billy the Barbarian
When I was a young child, I remember driving through the driving rain with the windshield wiper on full blast and feeling sad. I wasn’t sad because the sun had taken a day off and it was raining. Was I am only happy when it rains by the band Garbage written for me because I love to see the ground drink — especially in the desert? Yet when in mama’s station wagon in the rain and driving, I was sad — but not on account of the precip. — I was sad because of how hard the windshield-wipers were wiping, and I would always ask my mom to turn them down to medium. I guess I have always had a tendency to anthropomorphize — whipping wipers, parched earth, plants. I love plants — I would live in a greenhouse if I could (which may happen at some point) — I am dangerous when around plants for sale, consequently my home is full of houseplants and they all have names and it makes me sad if they are not doing well. From a very young age my heart leaned toward empathy – it was in my nature and imprinted on my soul — and a large part of that was due to growing up in a house of love. If I had the capacity to feel deeply about rubber, earth, plants, this would be a hint of the compassion that I could bring for my fellow-man – but sometimes, my body by way of my ego, got in the way.
My heart was huge and I guess the rest of the body felt left out so it decided to grow like a weed! At 7 or 8 I hit a growth spurt and quickly shot up to be one of the tallest and strongest in the class, and while at St. Bartholomew’s School and after being sent to the principal's office repeatedly for being too physical, Tommy, a good friend of my dad, recommended Mater Dei School, for they better dealt with the rough and tumble boy. So I switched schools, moving to another Catholic school, but this one was all-boys. And as high as I was on the percentile charts, I was just as high on He-Man: Master Of The Universe. He-Man was a 1980's TV show with a cartoon-Conan as He-Man, who would fight the evil forces of Skeletor for control of Castle Greyskull, the vaunted oracle of secrets that governs Eternia, aka: Planet He-Man. Cartoon He-Man meet real life Conan The Barbarian – let’s have a party! I could not get enough of Arnold swinging his gargantuan sword, decapitating serpent and sorceress, saving and bedding all the beautiful and distressed damsels. I was obsessed to the point that other mom’s would not want me playing with their sons because of how violent I was becoming, so mama 86’ed the sword and sandals shows for a bit, yet even still I would sneak it. Everything in threes – lest we forget the video game, Rastan, He-Man/Conan repackaged and repurposed as Rastan – the pixelated hero in loincloth you could control at the rate of 25 cents for three lives at you local arcade – #heaven! And when these “manly men” were not on a screen near me, I would venture outside, forage for a stick for a staff, and adventure high and low around neighborhood and though backyard – traversing creak, beating down brush with my staff, and hacking and slashing the air — I mean, enemies – stage by stage, round by round, dispatching mighty boss after mighty boss. All, everyone, and everything fell before the feet and fist of Billy the Barbarian! 
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!
– Conan –
The Ultimate Warrior
You can take Billy out of the place, but you can’t take the Billy out of Billy – to cop a line. Mater Dei School was a new home that suited better my rough and tumble Billy nature, but past this still beat a heart of compassion that bled true for overworked bands of automated swinging rubber. To cop an athletic analogy – as it takes more time for an offense to congell, it takes time for what is truly inside to bud to the surface. So with my sensitive soul still a primordial soup, I glomed to wrestling. On the professional wrestling landscape, The World Wrestling Federation or WWF was the preeminent player and when it crossed paths with The World Wildlife Federation, in a perhaps more apt move the WWF ceded to the animals and reworked their acronym to WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment, which for and millions more that’s what it was – entertainment. The technical aspect of sport is kinda lost on me – I more enjoyed the big picture of sport and life, so this made sense that what spoke to me about the WWE was the spectacle. In a similar way I have never seen myself as a lust for violence kinda guy. As a matter of fact – punches to the face still kinda make me cringe. I loved WWE for the “E” – the entertainment, the backstory, the show, the drama, the fanfare, the charisma. The most flamboyant ones were the ones I wanted to be. Sean Michaels, Bret Hart, Goldberg, Razor Ramon were all tall, dark, handsome, athletic, entertaining, captivating actors and in the business of selling their personality or persona. I used to do push ups in my bedroom to the cover of wrestling magazine, which was Shawn Michaels’ flexing, oozing machismo. But then there was The Ultimate Warrior.
The Ultimate Warrior is my all-time favorite wrestler. Warrior was notorious for his wrestling technique, yet famous for his entertainment – what a perfect match for me! Like a shooting star, Warrior’s matches went fast and bright with the fire of a thousand suns. The presence of Warrior was brief yet beautiful beyond words, rendering capacity crowds speechless in its ferocity, and like a force of nature and a perfect shooting star – the wish came true.
From behind the curtain, shot out of a canon, Warrior blasts unleashed – sprinting, careening, barrelling toward the ring with unprecedented, other-worldly aura and energy – making one commentator remark that while Warrior’s pre-match antics were an in a league of his own, 11/10, his in-match wrestling technique was more of a 1 – yet I didn’t care, I was too busy enjoying the show. You can’t do everything right, and to be at the extreme of one scale it is only fair to be somewhere near the other end of another. Warrior was the consummate entertainer, yet unlike many of the other wrestlers, he was not acting. What you saw is what you got – inside and outside the ring was the same person, but perhaps without the tassels and face paint. It was not a job for Warrior, it was a lifestyle, and the WWE was the perfect platform. And to those with open eyes it was no surprise that Jim Helmuth completed the consummation when he legally changed his name to “The Ultimate Warrior” from “Parts Unknown!”
In a world that increasingly leans toward conformity, Warrior was the opposite – an antidote to conformity – and the world loved him for that. Like the snowflake and more apt like the fingerprint, we are all individuals loaded with a capacity of expressing individuality. Millenia ago and to better survive, man formed the first society, and with society comes societal responsibility and pressure. To conform to what society demands while honoring the innate individual can be one of life’s greatest challenges, but one that we as individuals and parts of a whole are called to engage. Like bugs to a flame, there is an inner-child in all of us who will always be attracted to those who follow their inner-child or inner-voice. While we need society, we want the individual – and like a shooting star when we get to glimpse the individual, we are in awe.
The world kneels before love – it is in awe.
– The Village –
On April 6, 2014, the runner-up only to perhaps Hulk Hogan in all-time popularity and 16 years after his last match, The Ultimate Warrior was finally inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame. The 16 year lapse speaks mostly to the tenuous relationship the man “from parts unknown” had with long-time head of WWE, Vince McMahon, and the big business, big money bureaucracy – which had become pro wrestling.
On April 7 – the following day – Warrior appeared on WWE’s premiere weekly feature – Monday Night Raw and gave this speech to a packed house of adoring fans – many of whom I am sure were supremely there to see the Warrior talk!
No WWE talent becomes a legend on their own. Everyman’s heart beats his final beat; his lungs breath their final breath, and if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others — if it make them believe something deeper and larger than life, then his essence, his spirit will be immortalized by the storytellers by the loyalty by the memory of those who honor him and make the running the man did live forever. You, you, you, you, you, you are the legend-makers of the Ultimate Warrior. In the back I see many potential legends — some of them with warrior spirits — and you will do the same for them — you will decide if they lived with the passion and intensity so much so you will tell your stories and you will make them legends as well. I am Ultimate Warrior; you are the Ultimate Warrior fans — and the spirit of the Ultimate Warrior will run forever.
On Tuesday April 8, the following day, Warrior dropped dead at 5 o’clock in the afternoon while walking with his wife to the car. Earlier in 2014, the same year, after a long battle with a chronic disease, my father passed away – magically on Valentine’s day. About one month before on January 6, my beautiful sister Linda gave birth to her first of two girls, Noelle, making my father a grandfather. “Noelle” comes from the French for “Christmas” – and what a divine gift bequeathed to our family, my sister, and Noelle’s grandfather, my father, dad. Christianity celebrates The Epiphany every year on January 6th as the point when the three wise men and the world realized their savior was at hand. Noelle graced our family with similar magnitude.
On the surface, my father and The Ultimate Warrior couldn’t seem more dissimilar – and dad would probably give me a hard time for this trying relation. Yet there is something stupendously powerful in the conviction and truth by the way both Dad and Warrior lived their lives – and something magically mystical, divinely ethereal in how they died. It’s not a stretch to say that Warrior crossed an ultimate finish line when he achieved Hall Of Fame immortality in front of his peers and then spoke about immortality the next day in front of his fans. My father was such a kind and loving soul and it makes me sad that dad is not here now to continue to mentor and be my friend, but in some sort of ephemeral, beautiful, metaphysical way he, like the Warrior, chose their time to go . . . the exact right time.
Just as a beautiful and precious life was brought into the world it was time for a beautiful and immortal life to have eternal rest. We’ve got this from here, pop. As I write this, I am in tears and my mom’s dog, Winnie, who had been sleeping on the couch across the room jumps off to be by my side, to help dry my tears – no words, just a presence – animals know – or maybe dad’s spirit is somehow still here – in Winnie, in the room, in all of us all the time – gently helping us as we live our lives. I like this idea and I have found much comfort in it ever since beginning my journey at Catholic University, and around Christmas, by myself for the first time, I stopped by my dad’s grave since his passing to say hi and to let him know what he already knows – that I got this. It’s been a bumpy road for a while there, but I can truly feel, for the first time in perhaps as long as I can remember, that I am on the right road now and I could not be happier, and I really never knew life could feel this good . . . . and I cried.
Interlude
At some point the probing mind asks of the feeling heart an eternal question – why? If you spend enough time with something, eventually the something begins to become you. Herein lies the advantage of book over movie. A movie may last two hours, but you can live with a book for days, weeks, months. You dwell with the text, and the text dwells in you and even becomes you – and in this process and over the course of time, let the question of why does rise. I would beg my mom and my dad and my granddad – anyone who would listen – to pluck down the monies for the pay-per-views every month and use my sister as my wrestling rag-doll and when she would cry I would yell, DOG-WEWEEEEE – referring to the “don’t eat the yellow snow” – and Linda, for her own reasons, loved it and when I would scream it, half the time it stopped the tears, but the other half got me an old scolding from Mama G that usually embodied – you don’t know your own strength — or a spank. Big Billy was a rough, tumble, rumbler – and that was my why for a while, yet still something else beyond the physical burned behind the veil. It was the showmanship, charisma, adoration, emotion, spectacle, entertainment, romance – the theatre – as we alluded to earlier – is what I loved. When entering a room full of strangers, there may be an initial and natural inclination to gravitate toward the strangers who look like you – and then to dig deeper. We are attracted to things that resonate with who we are – things that agree and remind us of our soul. And, for me, yesterday when I attended Georgetown Prep’s production of The Beauty And The Beast with my niece and mom, I was not all jokes when I quipped back to a friend who commented on my loud jacket – Maybe I missed my calling. And when I saw two juniors whom I used to coach and were helping with backstage production, I said to them they should really try to act in a play before they graduate. It was a form of regret that I never tried to act a play, and I qualified it by telling the juniors that I don’t think I was secure or confident enough in my own skin, with myself at the time – at their time – to do it, and because of that I should have acted. Yet I don’t really like to do regrets, and wouldn’t change a thing because I love where I am in life and where I am going. If you had the magic wand that could wave away something in your past, that edit doesn’t happen out of context and all of life connected to that event ripples differently and is altered – maybe a little; maybe a lot. So I say if you like enough or dare to love your life today – a question only your heart knows – change nothing.
. . . . . alas, all the world's a stage
Football
When I was not watching wrestling, I was playing football. I loved me some pigskin and I was good! The fifth grade was my first year of organized tackle football and I ate it up and quickly went from offensive line to running back when my dad dropped a little hint to the first year coach about his first year lineman — “Hey, Billy is pretty fast.”
In football speed kills — in the backfield and on the edges – and the next practice the quarterback was handing the ball off to me in the backfield and I would speed around the edges – #heaven! I remember watching the same VHS highlight tape of college football’s best before every game. Eric Dickerson, Rocket Ishmael, Barry Sanders – they were all running backs who tore it up in college and dominated the pros. I couldn’t get enough — that is until I got a weird feeling inside — maybe for the first time ever I was nervous.
Everyone gets nerves or butterflies in the tummy, and they aren’t something that you outgrow — and that’s a good thing. If you care about something, your heart independently knows and decides to pump blood harder and faster to the rest of your body. The more blood, the more oxygen, and the better it usually goes. To better harness your nerves and use them to your advantage, always be collecting data. It can be said about competition — either you win or you learn. You can win and learn — and I hope you do, but I feel that it is human nature to learn more in loss. So it is in the winning, losing, experiencing of life and over time that we better understand the self and are better able to positively utilize our nerves. To have the good, healthy butterflies is a must in life – this means that you are doing something you care about and at its core love. Keep it, treasure it, protect it, nourish it, love it, do it – and if the butterflies leave or were never even there . . . .
For what it’s worth . . . it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best of the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald –
Fitzgerald is one of my favorite writers and one of my favorite books is The Great Gatsby. His prose is poetry and poetry means to create – which tugs at the divine. Fitzgerald was a dreamer and so was his main character, Gatsby, and before we return to Football-Billy watching highlights in his favorite family room chair and this strange new sensation, one last quote from the dreamer, for the dreamer was me too:
One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees – he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.
In spite of this new nerve thing and only winning one game, my first year on the gridiron was a smashing success. I loved football and the game suited my physical nature – it was like WWE for keeps. When 6th grade rolled around, I was psyched to do it again, yet amazing the difference a year makes. My growing slowed, I got kinda chubby, and some of the other kids caught up. Nonetheless, I reprised my role as starting running back, but as goes a pun about the NFL – not for long. The coaches were no longer impressed with my running and speed so they moved me back to the defensive line. I cried, and in a swirl of emotion in my new position I ripped through the offensive line and crushed the quarterback, injuring him. And when the coach asked me why I was crying and not proud of this impressive football feat, I lied and said that I felt bad for my buddy I had crushed. Yet my buddy turned out to be fine and it was my ego that was crushed – my identity shattered . . . that was why I cried.
The season came and went and with all the changes that go on in a boy’s body, the sixth grade was an uncomfortable year. Yet in discomfort there is growth. Strong men lift weights to rip their muscles so the muscles grow back stronger, but try having a 6th grade boy embrace that analogy!? It was winter and it was dark and I remember retracting from my friends for a stretch when all I really looked forward to was getting home from school to work on my fantasy tale — Bound To Be A Legend. I was immersed in this fantasy world – perhaps because I presently didn’t like my real world – and I would stay up in my room and smash that Brother Word Processor for hours and loved it. Whether it was depression or just adolescence, does not belie that fact that some 30 years later I am writing at length my personal truth. I guess as far back as 6th grade I had a flair for writing and a style for flair, fantasy, the romantic. I enjoyed writing and the fantasy world I would inhabit in my room before dinner, but I wanted to write to become famous so my friends would like me again — even though it was probably all in my head. Yet even with puberty and all the change that it brings, even then and in my writing, perhaps there were flashes of something different. My mom would often exasperate – are you just being different to be different? Everything on a spectrum – so maybe a little bit of both, but for the meantime . . . .
. . . .I am doing pushups!
The pushups triggered something, and I started to grow again. They worked, it worked, I worked and my round-mound-of-rebound body began to stretch. As a 7th grader, I was back to being big and tall and back at running back in football, my favorite sport. Seventh grade was good to me, and in the spring, I found lacrosse – or lacrosse found me in the form of Kevin Giblin when he sized me up by saying something along the lines of – Gerrish, you are too big and fast to be playing baseball. Kevin is usually right and he was right with me. I stunk at baseball – so I picked up a lacrosse stick and “athleted” my way onto the “A-team.” One time my dad asked Kevin how I was doing with this new, foreign sport with a stick with a net at the end of it, and Kevin remarked — He’s got no idea what he’s doing, but he is doing a great job! Kevin was right again. I taught and coached with Kevin for years and I, and scores more, have looked up to Kevin tremendously as a role model. Kevin has an uncanny “spidey-sense” to know exactly what to say and do at any given time. 
Prudence is oftentimes called the hinge of all virtues and this is what Kevin has in spades – and nowhere was it on a stage more than on the lacrosse field. Like a savant, Kevin would be looking one direction yet somehow be able to sense when someone behind him was in the wrong spot or offsides – and Kevin was right! When Kevin and I were together at Mater Dei, we were both in the teachers’ lounge and when I was laughing about something and with it being a Friday, Kevin chimed in – Gerrish, who are you gonna make laugh this weekend? That was the first time I realized that I am funny. Kevin Giblin – what a smart, funny, cool dude, friend . . . .he deserves a book.
Eighth grade was similar to seventh. Football went great as well as a winter full of basketball and in the spring – lots of lacrosse. I crushed it and I was the big man on campus – literally and figuratively. I remember one time in English class for a poem assignment I wrote a poem about lacrosse and recited it in front of the class in a cut-off shirt – because we had a game abruptly following class. After I read what I wrote, I picked up a smirk or a chuckle from the teacher and a remark – “that’s about right for Gerrish.” And I was happy because it reassured my place as the big, strong dude who was good at sports – “the jock.” Amazing the difference a few years make, for when I walked into a psychologist’s office in high school to test for ADD, he used the same term to presumably sum me up, and I was quick to point out that I did not like being called a jock.
I wrote this poem – that is for sure, but there was a time when my dad helped me with my homework. In middle school I don’t know if it was that I viewed myself as a poor writer or maybe I was lazy or it was my dad’s eagerness to help that wrote my papers. With only good intentions, I remember my dad writing or helping me write a handful of papers, poems, assignments. I loved Joe Montana and when we had an assignment in the 6th or 7th grade to write a play, dad wrote me a darn good play with Joe Montana as the star. About the same time there was a poem assignment and daddio crafted me a stellar poem on the feelings of the end of daylight savings – when in the spring we lose an hour of sleep. The next day when I brought my/dad’s poem into English class, I guess I took such a shining to it that I volunteered to read the poem in front of the class. My teacher was Dan Paro, and Dan Paro is still a teacher for me. Dan is the athletic director at Georgetown Prep – my high school Alma Mater and where I am currently coaching the JV lacrosse team. Dan and I see eye-to-eye about many things – and maybe we were on that same level back then when he called me out. I fudged some response about how my dad gave me pointers about meter and structure and that I wrote the poem. That was enough – Dan got it; Dan knew. I don’t know if this was enough to teach me the lesson of writing my own stuff, but it moved the needle in the right direction – I remember it for a reason!
My 8th grade year was also a year of romance. In the fall at a mixer I met Kelley and fell in love. Did I fall in love with this person or was I in love with being in love – now there is a whopper with cheese – and there was plenty of cheese in the poems and love letters that I would write to Kelley while in class. Kelley and I began dating in the fall and through the winter and spring, and when I looked up it was May and I realized what my mom had been telling me – date around, especially for an 8th grader, there are many fish in the sea. Yet dating Kelley and missing her and talking on the phone and the letters and poems and holding hands and my first kiss – at the time was the best thing ever – I wouldn’t trade the memory or experience for the world. Practicing my french kiss in the shower, writing down notes in class of what to talk about later that night on the phone, talking on the phone with mom’s cooking-timer set to ding when times was up, seeing Se7en in the movie theatre, slow dancing, holding hands, kissing – these were a few of my favorite things, and while some of my 8th grade friends were doing things more than kissing, I was intimidated by anything more – so we stayed on “first-base” – because of religion, house-hold influence, insecurities, identity . . . . all the above?
Freshman year in high school I was rolling around making out in the grass behind my buddy’s house with my girlfriend, Ruthie. The mother of the house caught our adolescent canoodling and joked to my mom about this cute and funny episode. My buddy caught the interaction and reported to me mom’s response was – Billy doesn’t do that. So many years hence, who knows if my mom said that or even if our moment in the grass was even reported to mom – but it hits home to me as something mom would say. Our household growing up was not an overly sexual one. I don’t think I can remember once thinking that my parents were having sex, meanwhile my best friend at the time would constantly report the opposite. This is not meant to be condemnation of one home and praise of the other – and the presence of sex and affection in a household is not the end all, be all – yet my father may have said I love you occasionally and in letters, but I don’t remember ever saying it back.
In a tragic yet beautiful way, it wasn’t until my father passed away that I started telling mom, Linda, friends to their face that I love them. Also at the time of my father’s passing, I was coaching basketball, and a parent of a young man I was coaching said to me that you don’t become a man until your father passes. Who knows – but all I know is that it unlocked my L-Bomb chamber and now I say it all the time to family, old friends, new friends, kids, and the occasional stranger if we’ve shared a moment. It is kinda like Frank’s Red Hot – I put that s#!t on everything. To blanket the world with love – there is no mightier calling. Jesus says so when he sums up his mission – love god and love neighbor as yourself – simple in the writing; profound in the doing . . . . be doing.
Slow and steady wins the race? It may have taken me a little longer than most to get to where I am now, but I wouldn’t change a thing because I love where I’m at. It is said that nature and nurture conspire to help you become who you are. And I’d say that in the beginning there is mostly nurture and as you grow you age into your nature – who you really are. For some the process is slow, for others the process is fast, but for all it is just right. By getting to know your nature you begin to understand the process that has brought you to your here and now – this moment, 8:37 AM on April 1 – ain’t no fooling here 😉. And having gotten to know myself over 41 years, I see my sensitive soul and it makes sense that it has taken time to bloom. The chrysalis encloses the caterpillar as it miraculously transforms into a butterfly, opening in accordance with nature. When one’s own nature is in harmony with Nature, watch out world – it’s time to fly. But before this happens and inside your chrysalis there is work and the most important work is the relationship that you have with your nature.
Temet Nosce – know thyself . . . .
and fly.
In the fall of 1996 and having just turned 15, I began my freshman year at Georgetown Prep. Many of my friends from Mater Dei carried over to Prep, one of the reasons why I picked it, and this helped to make the transition into the bigger pond of high school easier. While it was convenient to keep with your Mater Dei clique, we understood the importance of stretching outside the comfort zone to make new friends. I stretched and made it a point to hang with different people and do different things. Oftentimes what I saw my friends doing, I would do the opposite. Again – actively trying to be different, or just different by nature – most likely both, but which one ruled? In spite of my insides urging me to be different, my best friend throughout high school was Mike.
Mike
I first met Mike when he was visiting Mater Dei in 5th grade as a prospective student, and because of the “desk-shortage of 1992,” I carried his desk from class to class – it is a funny story that we still laugh about today. Mike and I liked to do the same things, play the same sports, laugh at the same stuff – it was a truly wonderful, magical, genuine friendship. We were both competitive and loved sports – so it was natural that we clashed athletically, pushing ourselves to be better than the other. My mom would constantly say – you bring the best out of each other, and you know how I feel about the wisdom of mom – and she was right. Iron sharpens iron. I remember playing one-one basketball freshman year so hard that the coach had to stop the contest after Mike fell and his tooth chipped the wood court. I remember playing “midnight basketball” under the street light outside of his house into the wee hours of the next day – refusing to go to bed because the other wanted the last word. I remember racing bikes with Mike down his street and at full speed and our handlebars interlocked, rocketing us both into a flag pole – miraculously we were both fine. Football, basketball, lacrosse, driving, video games, chess, grades, eating, drinking – everything was a competition. I have so many memories of me, Mike, and my dad – and thinking that dad liked Mike more. One time in high school we went on a cruise as a family and I remember playing the best basketball of my life – maybe because Mike wasn’t there – and when I came back home I wasn’t as good – or at least I thought. The fact of the matter was that I felt that Mike would always get the edge – and he kinda did, and when Mike wasn’t there I was the peacock with the biggest plumage – my confidence was restored. Unable to ignore these real feelings, I would look for opportunities to do things without Mike, and when I did I felt more able to be me.
With confidence to this day, I say that Mike is the most competitive person I have ever known. Mike came into this world with a scowl and ready to rage – it was in his nature. I wanted to be like Mike – just as competitive and winning, yet I was not wired to Mike’s degree – no one really was. Competition is Mike’s super-power and I wanted it to be mine too. This was why when I was with Mike, I would try my best to be as competitive as Mike, but when Mike was not there I was a different Billy, an easier Billy. It is work to be someone who you are not, and it is called acting, but I wasn’t getting paid, nor did I know at the time that I was acting. Yet still Mike and I remained thick as thieves throughout high school, but when it came to college I chose Duke – primarily to get out of the area and out from under the shadow of Mike. But what I didn’t know then and what I have fully come to realize now – you cannot run away from your problems, you need to dig and dig and dig until you get to the core and at the core is always truth, and if you don’t feel truth, keep digging – you’re not there yet. So fashioning myself as “mini-Mike” I went south to school to beat my chest and to be the biggest alpha at Duke because there was no Mike. Yet my true super-power was still lay in waiting for me one day to fully discover it!
Sports
“I played a kid’s game for a king's ransom.”
– Warren Sapp (Professional football player) –
Sophomore summer at our first pre-season football camp, Mike and I half-joked about quitting because it was so hard in the August heat. After our first pre-season scrimmage and while the rest of the team sweated and watched the film of the scrimmage, my father allowed me to skip a day of football camp so I could celebrate my birthday on the beach with a double-quarter pounder and fries from McDonald’s. Mike would tell the funny story that during the film Coach Paro would keep calling out my name, most likely for errors, and Mike had to repeatedly remind Coach that Gerrish was at the beach. When I returned to practice Tuesday, I had the feeling that Coach Paro would be upset, but I remember dad smoothing it over with the coach. Yet in the first game of the season when the starting running back went down with an injury, my number was called to run the football. I crushed it and we won the game! In my first varsity game and as a sophomore to be called to play my all-time favorite position when the team needed someone to do it – there were little expectations put on this rookie sophomore and I played with the joy of a 5th grader – like I did in the beginning. I was in the zone and was able to transcend the magnitude of the moment and the pressures that would eventually come to roost. Mid-season and over pasta and red sauce at our pregame meal before the biggest game of the year against our, The Landon School, I broke down and began to cry. The pressure of the moment became too much for me to hold inside, and the emotion materialized in the form of tears – a tangible representation of intangible things. And the same Dan Paro who called me out as the immature 7th grader who turned in a poem his dad wrote, noticed my despair, came over, sat by my side and put an arm around me when that was the exact thing I needed. Comforted, and with a vote of confidence, we went out there and beat Landon by a score of 14-7 – and it could be that I remember the score because one of those touchdowns was mine!
All in all, my high school years were consumed with sports. My freshman year I played a sport for every season – football in the fall, basketball in the winter, lacrosse in the spring. After my freshman year, the commitment that a varsity sport required led me to cut out basketball – and that was what Mike and the rest of my friends were doing too. Basketball was so fun and I look back to our undefeated freshman team that beat every hard-court powerhouses in the area as one of the most fun athletic experiences of my life. Even with the urging of Coach Paro telling me to give it a go my sophomore winter, I shelved basketball for the weightroom and for lacrosse to “give my body a rest” – yet was lacrosse even my favorite sport? Yes, it was my favorite because people told me I was good at it (and I was), and that I had a bright future in the sport – lacrosse could help punch my ticket to a good college. Taking into account that my last official taste of basketball was a freshman all-star team, I still think that for me basketball was the most fun. Back then, I was very afraid of messing up, and basketball was a smaller stage – literally the court is smaller than a lacrosse or football field – and I felt that with basketball I could blend in more and better choose my times to jump into the action. I would describe my personality as reactive – similar to how I have the ability to diverge and connect seemingly dissimilar ideas – I feel most comfortable when the table is set or things are in place so that I can riff off or go to work on a given situation – and I felt that was more the case for basketball. Alas to harken back to the instant classic – White Men Can’t Jump – for a white kid who was topped off at 6’2” as a freshman and had a hard time dribbling, my future in basketball didn’t look all that bright.
Football was good for me and I was good for it. Colleges wanted me to play and I got letters from many schools, most notably Penn State. At Duke on my first day on campus while walking to the lacrosse coaches' office, I guess I caught the attention of a football coach when he said — “Hey, you’re big — wanna play football.” Side note: my first two years at Duke the football team went 0-21, losing every game. Their first game the following year they won, touching off raucous celebrations because we were 1-0 – and undefeated! Football was a great sport for me and it was my first love, but Mike and the majority of my friends were hoping to play lacrosse in college, and for me to be able to get a scholarship from Duke to play lacrosse fed my ego, image, identity. Remember when I said that I cringe when I see someone get hit in the face — well I didn’t really like head-to-head collisions either and football’s got a whole lot of those!
It was junior year, mid-season and we were playing the number one high school in the state of Maryland. I don’t know if we even cracked the top 20 and we were giving Seneca Valley a serious test of their top metal. There was no pressure on the Little Hoyas of Georgetown Prep and all the pressure on the Screaming Eagles. It was a low scoring first half with both teams trying to figure out what the heck was going on. I was playing nose-guard, smack-dab in the middle of the defense and head up on the center – and playing with that little Billy 5th grade zeel that slips beyond the pressure of the arena to where you barely hold onto the magnitude of the moment. The leader and Quarterback of the Screaming Eagles was Chris Kelley. Chris went on to play football at Maryland and even had a tryout with the Redskins. Chris hailed from upper-county, public school and I was your down-county boy from Georgetown Prep. We were both juniors, played on both sides of the football, even looked alike, and were not afraid of contact. Prep was David trying to slay the giant that was Seneca Valley, and it didn’t take long for me to toss the playbook and fall back on my little-Billy-backyard-football instincts. In the middle of the defense, I noticed some unconventional blocking coming from the number one offensive line in the state. Nose-to-nose with me was Seneca Valley’s center and the center usually blocks the nose-guard, but I guess the Screaming Eagles thought it prudent to employ a “down-blocking” offensive scheme. Instead of the center, the guard-next-door relative to the direction the ball was going would block down on me. Yet in any good scheme there is opportunity to get burned, and I sniffed out their chicanery (I was the nose-guard after all). On the snap of the ball, my spidey-senses quickly picked up the direction of the pressure, the direction of the football. Keeping with the topic of quick, Chris Kelley and he was fast and would utilize his speed by flying to the outside of the defense to get around the end. I knew this, and what Chris may not have known before the game was that Billy out his four-point stance was flat-out fast too, and when Billy forgot about the sport of football and played it as a kid’s game, he was fast and flat-out fierce – and Chris Kelley got an up-close and personal, front row viewing and education on this topic when on the goal line past down-block aplenty, I grew wings and flew down the line to meet him. It was not a cordial meeting. Chris was running left and I was running right and as we collided my head slid to the outside and my helmet found the football that was couched in Chris’ outside hand. I blew that fucking couch up! Down goes Kelley and out goes the football. Prep recovers and goes the length of the field and scores to tie the ballgame at one touchdown a piece. Now we’ve got a ball game, ladies and gents – Prep came to play. We played our hearts out that fall Saturday and made the Screaming Eagle scream, but unlike the fabled David ran out of gas and fell to the bigger and better Goliath in overtime.
My mom has a house in Florida and on a recent visit over a stormy stretch I talked with Randle, the man who combs the beach. Randle is 65 but looks 45 and is proud of that. Randle loves to cook, and whether it be Saturday or Sunday, on his day off, Randle cooks Jamaican goodness – fish! Old Man And The Sea is about an old man named Santiago, an unnamed youngster, and their quest for a great catch on the sea. To the youngster the sea is masculine and against the sea he must fight, but to Santiago the “sea” is feminine, and with the sea they dance. To live fully is to dance – two bodies becoming one – to jointly flow to the rhythm and hum of the universe. Yet when the tide was pressing hard against the shore and gobbling up the beach, I remarked to Randle that it must be hard to everyday fight against nature, and he reminded me that nature is not the adversary, rather the dance-partner that you learn how to work with.
Competition comes from Latin – to strive for something, but not without the prefix com or cum, which means with. You compete with yourself, you compete with your teammates, you compete with the other team — yet competition is too often seen as contra or against; meanwhile, the root of the word belies this common misconception. They are not the opposition or the enemy — they are the team that you get to play with. Without Chris Kelley and Seneca Valley I would not have this indelible memory that puts a smile on my face when I write about it. And in the second half of the game when my good friend Eric went down with a shoulder injury, I cried – let’s win the game for Eric. Similarly a year later, when my best friend, Mike, went down with a bad knee injury on the last drive of the last game of our senior year, I cried the same thing to my teammates – let’s win for Mike, and we almost did. We drove the ball down to the goal line and had a shot at the end zone but it didn’t land. Enraged, I ripped off my helmet, spiked it on the ground, and in a tornado of emotion and tears charged the referee in protest. It wasn’t the referee’s fault – it usually never is, but I was possessed with the idea of winning. Not winning for the sake of winning or winning for myself (that’s kinda the opposite). I would do anything to win for my friend, because he no longer could do it – and if he could have, I bet we would have won. Naturally nothing came of my protest with the referee, but when I watched the tape of the game the next day, all I really wanted to see was my explosion – I was capable of emotion especially when it came to others and I was proud of that.
Sports can bring out the best in us, but it doesn’t happen without others. Without others life is lonely and lifeless, and it is imperative that when we bring people together in the spirit of competition to underscore that we don’t play sports against – you play sports with the other team – both teams striving to be their best and hopefully get the W. – but knowing that the W isn’t close to as important as what you do with the other team when the game clock is on. No matter if it is you with you or you with teammates or you with the other team, the word competition starts with com, and com means with – therefore, competition starts with . . . . with!
The man who loves walking will walk further than the man who loves the destination. When you fall in love with the journey, everything else takes care of itself.
– Jonathan Byrd –
Lacrosse
Lacrosse is one of the oldest games of North America and is the national sport of Canada (not hockey). Lacrosse is called The Creator’s Game because the game was given to them by their creator in a dream. When Native Americans pass from this world to the next, they are greeted with a lacrosse stick. The Creator’s Game was played on the “Indian” plains of North America long before the white man landed on her shores and it was a game that was meant to be enjoyed as a keeper of peace, a release of aggression and the ultimate means to honor its namesake — the creator. Because lacrosse had such spiritual roots, it was tied to the health of the individual and the tribe, garning it another nickname — The Medicine Game:
The story of Lacrosse begins as an expression of human experience, where spiritual belief and magic are entwined into the very fabric of the game. To understand the true origins of Lacrosse, one must enter a world where everything contains a spirit; animals, plants, earth, stones, as well as trees and water. The game was much more than just an athletic sport - it was a highly ceremonial event with deep-rooted spiritual significance to the community, spectators, and players. Every aspect of early games had a spiritual significance. Fields
were adjoined near rivers or streams to facilitate "cleanings rituals", and laid out east to west to orient towards the path of the sun. Players observed fasts, only drinking special potions from the Medicine Men. Sticks and equipment were doctored to remove bad spirits. Medicine Man led prayers and adorned players with ointments and salves to give them strength.
The entire affair of Lacrosse symbolizes a spiritual ritual to honor, heal, and celebrate individuals and communities. For this reason, lacrosse is often referred to as the Medicine Game. According to early Indian communities, “In times of sickness, the medicine people would prepare themselves and call upon the life forces of Mother Earth to assist in relieving sickness. The right medicines would appear, be chosen, and then prepared. To improve the power of the medicines a lacrosse game would be requested.” This healing has been described as a medicine game. The Medicine Game played a paramount role in Indian communities serving a primary means to bring about change and togetherness amongst themselves. (https://www.medicinemanlacrosse.com/the-medicine-game)
What a rich tradition and cool story about the origins of lacrosse, The Creator’s Game! I started playing lacrosse in the 7th grade with a spare wooden stick, and another point goes to Kevin Giblin for putting a pole or long-stick in my hand and making me a defenseman. I was already bigger than most of the 8th graders on the team and by mid-season I cracked the starting lineup! I was big and fast and strong, but I didn’t know what the heck I was doing, but remember — that’s ok, because whatever I was doing, I was doing it well!
Freshman year in high school when the seasons were turning from winter to spring, Mike and I were a couple of the better lacrosse players in our class and with the official start of lacrosse season only days away, we were invited to play in a “captain’s practice” — when the senior would run the practice without the coaches. The offer was optional and Mike jumped at the opportunity to play lacrosse while I stayed home to play Mario Brothers. Mike engaged the sport he loved and the world out there, and I remained transfixed in Mario-world — full of mushrooms, princesses, fire-breathing turtles — and when the days went by and it was time to play for keeps, Mike made varsity as a freshman and Billy played JV . . . . everybody won.
Our lacrosse coach freshman year on the JV was Mike Kubik. I was familiar with Kubes (as he was affectionately called overtly because of his last name and more intimately because he was a math nut), for he was an old teacher of mine from Mater Dei. It was around midseason when things for me began to click. I detect a theme here – the beginning or the initiation of things can be messy but once I am in there things are mostly copasetic. This may speak to my reactive personality or an initial reluctance toward sports. So it was midseason and I was playing well and having fun and as a team we were good. I remember Kubes giving out mini hammers after games as awards for the most outstanding defensive performance, and I am almost certain that I accrued four over the course of the season – more than anyone else. I remember playing Landon, our rival, at home and with the varsity watching I exploded on one of my teammates for flubbing a ground-ball repeatedly because he was lazily stabbing at it with one hand instead of bending over and scooping through with two. The point was received in-kind and I think we may have gone on to win that game – but truthfully I do not remember, and what I do remember is the impression that I made on the varsity spectators and their impression they made on me. Roid-rage, meathead, man-child – all affectionate terms that I obviously still remember as they left an indelible mark. I was happy — my identity was confirmed. Afterall, I rode to school every morning with the star senior defenseman, captain of the varsity and my role model. On the way, he would sometimes regale me with athletic stories and other times we just look out the window and listen to classic rock on the FM band – and some of my classmates would make fun of us saying that we would talk in grunts — completing each other's sentences. Hawk went onto the Naval Academy to serve his country, study, and play lacrosse.
Sophomore summer at the beach I met a girl and by the end of the summer we were more than friends. Casey lived in Newark, Delaware, we dated for much of the year, and Casey was the first person who helped me to realize that I was attractive. One time during this long-distance relationship, Casey said that she was lucky to be dating a guy like me — she said that I could have most anyone on my arm. In many ways it took time for my self-worth to pop – and I guess the understanding that I had what it takes to be handsome was one of those things. I was more than just a jacked and athletic bod — I had a decent visage to boot — and this uncovered another layer of self for me to sink my teeth into.
Trading basketball for the weight-room paid dividends in the bulk and strength department — so much so that dad thought that I was in a weird way turning into the Hulk too fast (except for the green). So I quit the personal training I was doing with friends. Dad was probably right — I was blowing up like a tic. I guess I had the potential for serious gains, but on the heels of lacrosse season, bulk was good but speed kills! It all worked out, and by early spring I was a starting defenseman and having a ball! Similar to my experience with football, I was a sophomore who was excelling and having fun — excelling because I was having fun, and the older, talented defensemen around me who absorbed the spotlight may have been the reason. I played free like the boy who first picked up the his “crooked-arrow.” But by junior year, people were taking note of my transcendent ability, and colleges desired transcendence. Yet still, senior talent helped divert the critical eye, allowing me to play free as everyone gave witnessed to the burgeoning of a freak athlete.
Every spring the Prep-Landon lacrosse game is one the biggest sporting events of the year and when I was a junior Landon School was the stage. We had a rough start with Landon going up on us — a lot of goals to goose-egg! But in life, with time things correct themselves — given time, the game corrected itself, yet we still found ourselves trailing Landon 12-9 at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
On the other team, there was a big defenseman whom many viewed as my counterpart or “evil-twin.” He was a very impressive athlete who dominated the field and intimidated off of it. I was a very impressive athlete who dominated on the field, and was super nice and quiet off of it. But still, Billy was envious and wanted to be like this bully. Maybe I viewed him as a better athlete or maybe because I was attracted to his off-the-field aura — either way it was adolescent insecurity. Although, he did have a jun-e-se-qua — an air that could not be put to words and he kinda used it for bad, yet to me it was still attractive - and that was what the people wanted — someone to stand up to Skeletor, but I may have out-grown my He-Man.
With Prep down 3 to the vaunted Landon Bear, Big Bill (I dropped the “y” from Billy to sound more mature) goes coast-to-coast and scores a goal — but not without fumbling the ball midway while trying to switching hands to show off that I had good stick-skills, as that other defenseman. It is unusual for a defenseman to score a goal on the opposing defense and although there was plenty of time left in the game, this was the last goal of the game. We lost to Landon 12-10, but I was happy because I scored a goal, and in doing so may have out-performed that other defenseman on Landon. However, all that having been said, I was even more happy that the game was over and pressure was off.
I often wonder if things would have been different if Mike didn’t get hurt on that final drive of that final football game, and he was able to play lacrosse our senior year. Mike was good in the athletic spotlight and maybe his presence and play would have allowed for me to play more free. On the whole, it’s not that I shrink from pressure or the weight of the moment — rather it just took me a little longer than most to find my true talents — but with Mike out for our senior season, the team needed leadership and it needed to come from me.
Earlier when writing about sophomore and junior year, I spoke of times of transcendence – when I felt outside myself and in some zone where I knew nothing of the scores of eyeballs that were watching me. As a senior, these moments of real joy of play seemed to have flown away, and I remember being in games and wishing that the clock would tick faster so the game could be over — because I didn’t want to mess up. Similarly, on the bus to away-games I would wondered what if something happened to the field where we were supposed to play — what if a meteor; what if an earthquake – would we still have to play?! Even though I was the best player, a lot of times I did not want to play for the thought of messing up and this pressure outweighed the exhilaration of success on the lacrosse field. I remember insisting on riding separate from the team and with my parents to a game in Southern Maryland so that I could sit in the back seat and watch The End Of Days — a psychological thriller about the devil — and looking forward more to watching the end of the movie on the way home than playing lacrosse.
Was this all a plea from within to be free of the competition of athletics? Was there another voice inside hedging in, trying to gain my attention? Both? It is usually both, and as one thing leaves something has to take its spot — because there can’t ever be nothing. As a freshman at Duke when I wasn’t locked into lacrosse or snoozing through class, I was in the music library listening to the great composers. The romantics were and still are my favorite and I had a secret crush on the girl behind the counter — probably because there was a lot of truth to that Billy in the music library listening to Beethoven. The romantics wrote more flowery and emotional music than their predecessors. The romantics loved nature, the spirit, the individual, creativity, anguish, struggle, glory, love — as humans, they felt deeply and this conveyed in their music. Thinking back, I felt so at home in the music library — probably my favorite place at Duke. As a freshman I was being pulled in a very different direction, perhaps my actual direction, and it makes sense that Beethoven is still my favorite, and through his music I had always been able to relate to the struggles of life and the ethereal world of the romantics — ever the philosopher, ever the thinker, the pondered, the lover — a land of ideas, notions, ideals, love.
Small minds talk about people; good minds discuss events; great minds discuss ideas
— Denzel Washington –
Poet comes from the Greek, poietis or create, which was seen as bringing something out of nothing. The Greeks thought poietis was the highest form of art – moreso, the essence of art – and those who created couched themselves closest to the gods. Now I am no demi-god or demi-guy (Maui style), but I love to create – and the process of getting it and where it comes from most poets would say is most divine. The true genesis of things is one of the greatest, deepest, most marvelous mysteries of the galaxy – one that will most likely be with us ‘til the end of days. Yet once the creation is over, the majority of me wants to jump to the next thing to be created. I believe to create is my eternal essence, and maybe one day I will be in a chair in nature among birds and flowers in a land of ideas, simply creating – but until then that kinda throne don’t pay the bills!
I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves, to fix what was broken in us, and to help us become the people we dreamed of being. Lies that told a deeper truth.
– Westworld –
So I stand and I coach. Practice and games are the highlight of my day, and when I am in it and find my mind looking to jump to the next thing, a
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same . . .
I understand that wins, losses, championships, titles are all vain man-made constructs — impostors to truth, mannequins to men — fleeting and lifeless, and this I preach, but I do not expect them to fully understand this idea — they need time, wins, losses, experience, life.
Philosophy is wasted on the youth. . . someone famously quipped. The process is king, but in some human way the wins and losses belong somewhere — so it is that I coach to hopefully win the games for the kids, but if not I will sleep fine, and my goal is to have them hopefully do the same — because we practice well and play hard – and that is all you can do. Maybe all the way back when I was 18 and trying to win games and beat Landon there may have been that voice of truth inside that was beginning to beat out the refrain that all is vanity.
Love
When we lost our last football game of our senior year, I was most proud of my emotion at the end of the game, and the one person I really wished was there to witness it was my girlfriend. My senior year began with my first true love. Not too long ago, her dad passed kinda suddenly from a freak bout with cancer. Like my dad, her dad was a goober and that is why I loved him and one of the real reasons we loved each other. There was kindred among our spirits. So when I attended the wake of her father's at the same funeral home in the same room as my dad’s wake, I cried. Just as I didn’t think that I would cry at my dad’s grave, I cried with her. The heart has reasons that reason will never know (Pascal), and there may not be anything more real than tears – a physical manifestation of something beyond physics – something metaphysical. Tears make people stop. Even when you see your enemy cry or a really bad dude, a little bit inside you cries with them. I cry often these days and it feels good.
Malice is bad, but apathy is sad. In 1983 Jimmy Valvano’s NC-State Wolfpack were underdogs to win the men’s basketball championship, and when they did, a younger than I, Jimmy V iconically, beautifully streaked the court through the celebrating crowd, looking for people to hug.
A decade later at 47 Jimmy Valvano was in the fight of his life with cancer. Maybe more than his basketball success – maybe because of basketball, Jimmy V is remembered by how he lived with cancer. In 1993 through emotion and tears and before an adoring crowd, Jimmy V said . . . . .
We should do three things every day of our life. Number one is laugh. You should laugh everyday. Number two is to think, we should spend some time in thought. And, number three is you should have your emotions moved to tears. . .
I cried for my dad and Ruthie’s dad and maybe most of all for the loss of our beautiful relationship – and what could have been. Ruthie was my girl – maybe the girl that I loved the most. And like most teenage romances, it didn’t last and I was kinda the reason. Maybe I wasn’t ready for the magnitude and grace of true love, but who truly is? But you know it was true because I write about it now.
Ce lest vie – such goes life, and I could not be happier here in southern Maryland on retreat with a group of Prep sophomores talking about their relationship with God, family, friends, and the crazy ride of life. I think it was my dad who used to say – girl & time. Maybe Ruthie was the right person, but the timing was off – and it is too bad that we couldn’t grow, mature, flesh out the relationship together – but if that was my course there is a large chance that I would not be here . . . . happy on retreat and writing this.
The flap of the wings of a butterfly can be felt on the other side of the world – and I believe that. If you change the smallest thing in your past, all accidents that are connected to that miniscule (or large) thing, in theory, would be altered. That is why I like to say, if you are happy enough, change nothing – have zero regret. And I am happy enough . . . . dare I say – happy.
Ruthie broke up with me and broke my heart, and I cried . . . a lot. So with a broken heart I tried to tend to the heart and I did what I am doing right now – I wrote her a love letter packaged in a tiny music box that chimed the ultimate love song . . . . . Unchained Melody.
And when I first watched Elvis last summer and toward the end of the film and the end of Elvis’ life, the King first performed Unchained Melody to gushing, adoring fans, and again . . . . I cried.
Woah, my love, my darling
I’ve hungered for your touch
A long, lonely time.
And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?
I need your love
I need your love
Godspeed your love to me.
Elvis
Elvis was the first true global sensation. With his silky voice, swinging guitar, and shaking hips – there is no wonder his lip was not the only lips that would quiver. It didn’t take long for all the world to jump on the Elvis train – and just like a giant locomotive – when that puppy gets going there is no stopping it, and by the end it seemed that the whole world was aboard except for Elvis – he was on the tracks. It is often said that the world killed Elvis and it is also said that Elvis killed himself, but I don’t think either are to blame – for how could either be ready for the phenomenon that was Elvis. Defy the rules, dare to dream, change the world – the world was lucky to have Elvis for as long as we did – long enough to shatter mores and norms and to build back a better world, lighting the way to a brighter future for us all. Time can be marked by Christ and children – BC – and it is no stretch to say BE when it comes to music. Before Elvis there was music, singing, dancing, entertainment, and with Elvis there was all those things – transcendence. He defied humanity, and for a time was humanity, and when inhumanity killed King, The King stood to stand and sing . . .
There must be lights burning brighter somewhere
Got to be birds flying higher in a sky more blue
If I can dream of a better land, where all my brothers walk hand in hand
Tell me why, oh why, oh why can't my dream come true, oh why . . .
Elvis’ forever favorite song was Unchained Melody – a song written by somebody else, sung by other people – yet the last year of his life was the first time Elvis sang to the world his favorite song. Pricilla and Lisa Marie – Elvis’ wife and daughter – were the loves of his life, and while music, the stage, and fame cloaked his heart for much of his life, toward the end Elvis was beginning to return to his truth, but couldn’t consummate it soon enough. Pricilla may have been the one for Elvis, but the world had it all – everything, all things, the universe, yet one can be more than all – for with all there can always be one more – and with one it is always one . . . .
One > All
Elvis never stopped loving Pricilla – it was just that a bunch of stuff got in the way. The world yearned for Elvis and let him know by heaping itself upon the king. Heavy is the head that bears the crown – and perhaps none heavier than the weight that Elvis bore. Yet beneath the stuff, Elvis’ heart beat for Pricilla, Lisa Marie, his mama – this was his nature. I think in women there is true wisdom, and there is wisdom just as great to realize that women just may be better. In the end, and really all along, something tells me – this was a truth that Elvis knew. And you can hear the strain of Elvis’ nature in that song . . . .
Oh my love,
my darling,
I’ve hungered for your touch . . .
a long, lonely time. . .
Eden
When the kids would ask what it was like in the Garden of Eden, I would say heaven. And then of course they would ask . . . . what’s heaven like. And I would ask them if they have ever heard of Michel Jordan?
– Me & my fifth grade class –
My sports psychologist in college described “the zone” like an animal dashing through the forest, weaving mindlessly past tree and obstacle in pursuit of prey. For a time, to the animal there is no time and nothing else exists save for the prey. For Jordan during that six shot stretch fans, noise, pressure, people, teammates, worries all lifted, and for a time, for Jordan there was no time — it was only he and the basketball. Jordan was in the zone – and when you are in the zone you glimpse heaven, you sniff Eden – and what is more . . . .
. . . .we can all be like Mike!
I like to say that everyone is a genius – you just have to find your superhero quality – and when you do you are in the zone. Like the brain, the heart is divinely mysterious and god works in mysterious ways, but I’d say it’s everyone’s life mission to figure out the language of your heart, and when you do you are there, and you will know. Life’s great veil will be lifted, and it is just you in a zone that is uniquely, magically, metaphysically yours. The zone is the reason why you were put on earth – it is the unique solution to your unique fingerprint – it is your Eden and it is calling us all to return home. There you hum with the universe and the universe hums with you – there is no time, there is no anything – you are outside and above – you float regardless of gravity, weightless. All of the universe is at your back – all of the universe conspires in your favor because you are the universe and the universe is you – all is one – one. You are your highest you, your best you, your own fullest form, and if you die tomorrow, you are already there – for you have found the secret to life and unlocked the one, only, true you who is waiting for you past the veil of the heart. Lift the veil, let love out, become love – and love becomes you, one, in love.
He used to call me, text me 11:30, 2:30, 3:00 in the morning talking about post-up moves, footwork, and sometimes the triangle (offense). This kid had passion like you would never know. It is an amazing thing about passion – if you love something, if you have a strong passion for something, you would go to the extremes to try to understand or try to get it. What Kobe Bryant was to me was an inspiration that someone truly cared about the way I either played the game or the way that he wanted to play the game. He wanted to be the best basketball player he could be and as I got to know him, I wanted to be the best big brother I could be.
– Michael Jordan in tears talking about his “little brother,” Kobe.
They say that hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do because it is a moving bat hitting a moving ball. This gets back to Hericitus and not being able to step in the same river twice – you have changed and so has the river. This makes it hard to pin down your true self, but hard ain’t always bad. Hard can be good, because if you really want to know yourself it forces you to check in with you on a regular, consistent, maybe even daily-basis to see how the river looks, but mostly how you look. That’s what Kobe did and Kobe turned out alright!
I meditate, usually in the morning, for usually 10 or 15 minutes. It sets me up for the rest of the day. It is like having an anchor. If I don’t do it, I feel like I am constantly chasing the day – as opposed to being in control and dictating the day. Not like you are calling the shots that come forward, but that I am set for whatever may come my way. I have a calmness and poise with whatever comes my way. The reality is that we pay so much attention to what is going on around us that we don’t take the time to really observe what is going on inside of ourselves – and that comes with starting the morning off with meditation.
– Kobe –
Once you have found your Eden, your slice of Heaven on Earth, to live wisely is to live in thanks through action by constantly checking back in with you. The most important relationship in your life is the one you have with yourself. When you and self are one — when they are staring at each other in the mirror, the same, there is a total eclipse into one – and you are there. Naked, stripped, unashamed, unafraid, outside time, beyond everything — just you and the universe — your heart and the universe — love and the universe . . . .
. . . .and then just love – naked in Eden.
Return to Eden.
Paradise on Earth — Nicolas Poussin
Love,
Billy Gerrish
5/5/23