Pistol…

Greetings all. For those that are curious, we found the Sun!

I found the time to read all the books that traveled with me to Phoenix and one that didn’t. They were all very readable and worthwhile.

Pistol will stick with me…what a story of the journey to the top,bottom, and the search for meaning. Here’s a piece from page 164-165. Pete has just broken Oscar Robertson’s collegiate scoring record.

“In setting the record, he had passed into a higher, more permanent rung of eminence. But fame of this magnitude exacted a price.. Even Broussard Hall, where the athletes lived, was no longer a safe haven. Football players came banging on his door at all hours of the night. They’d want to shoot the shit. Or shoot some pool. Or wrestle with an honest-to-goodness celebrity. Mostly though, they wanted autographs.

It got to the place where Pete was like Elvis. He had to move out of the jock dorm senior year just to get some peace and quiet. Privacy, perhaps. Peace and quiet? Never.

Pete came home one day during his senior year and found his mother as he’d never quite seen her, or rather, as he’d never BOTHERED to see her. Her face was deeply lined. There were circles under her eyes. She seemed to be in a trance, a cigarette smoldering between her finger, its ashes forming a pile on the floor.

‘Oh, hi, Pete. So, you decided to come home, huh?’

‘Look at you’, he said.

LOOK. Even Pete couldn’t be blind anymore. Soon, he and Press would discover the bottles hidden in the couch cushion, in an old pair of shoes, in the chandelier. Then there was a vinegar bottle filled with booze.

Confronted, Helen finally lashed out. She was another human sacrafice to the GAME. This obsession shared by her husband and her son had shut her out and shut her down. Helen was almost a ghost herself now.

It was more than Pete could handle. He propped her up. He shook her. Then he cocked his fist. With all the strength I could muster, he recalled, I drove my fist past her head and into the plaster wall.

Then he stormed out.

So this was life at the TOP of the mountain. YOU were ALONE. Nixon could have told him that. Elivis, too.”

What are you shooting for?

Do you have big dreams for work and life?

A great life integrates work and life.

Open YOUR eyes.