There is a singular gift in our Country that is worth more than all the rest combined. Better than gold.

Better than yachts. Better than Lil' Yachty poppin bub on a yacht with beats thumping.

The gift of failure.

It is so rare.

So fucking rare.

If I had a problem with premature ejaculation, I'd hang a photograph of failure next to my bed, because failure is so hard to come by.

Failure means that you have something to fall back on, or the maniacal power to just allow yourself to die in the street hungry and cold.

In silicon valley in the 90's they were all failing so fast, using up so many resources, wasting so much time...bless their hearts.

A baby is born and is in the bassinet and if the dad's job is to put bass in a net, he right better do it and do it well, or failure.

What is failure?

I come back to a story I heard a long time ago about a (forgive me because this will be all wrong as all things inside my brain become) a potter who wanted, no needed via obsession to replicate a certain glaze that hadn't been produced in hundreds of years. It had a certain crackle that acted as a Mesmer upon him. He was already a surviving, if not successful potter with a wife and children and food and chairs and a roof and a shop for him to work in.  He stopped taking new work, he stopped playing with the wife and kids, he stopped making pots. He only worked on his glaze and the crackle. They ran out of food. The roof leaked. The wife left with the kids so they didn't die. He kept on glazing. Before he died, he did it.  He found the exact correct proportions of water and mineral and the exact right temperatures and curing and cooking times, with only the correct fire fuels, and exposure to oxygen. He did it. He got his glaze. 

Did he succeed, or did he fail?

The wildly frustrating thing is the answer is entirely up to each individual and their I don't know what...the soul.  What is likely the Voltron of your physical body's microbiome working in concert in the vibrations that we humans need fuck tons of drugs to tap into. The billions upon quillions of tiny universes that live in our bellies and on our skin and connecting us to the soup we call air and land around us, they get to decide now don't they if we want crackle more than love or food or security.

I am forty-five years old and it has been a long time since I could fail. 

When I was little, we were not rich and the 1980's really valued money.

Money equals happiness...

Of course I've met people in my life that taught me something else, or at least more nuanced.

Money equals freedom, freedom leads to happiness...

But most of the richest folks work the longest hours and have the shittiest family lives, so that can't be it either.

Money equals capacity to Fail...

When you can not succeed, when you can fail, when it isn't blocked in your spirit and body and brain and fingers and ankles by a universe of fighting against failure, then you can be more free and that equates to more happy... if you are so inclined.

I made choices as a teenager that committed me to a life that I may not have otherwise chosen. Of course, somehow I could have been empowered to fail at this endeavor, but there isn't any appendage in my structure that supports it.

I am forty-five years old and maybe I can fail now.

I will have to remake the man I am. It won't be automatic. 

No matter how much I want it, I won't become an overnight failure.

I have had and I have had not, and I know enough to know I'll be equally me in either state.

My commitments are unfurling, like that wind-pillow we unroll on the beach, the one we call the blue-vajin.

It is more callous than muscle fighting failure, I need to dig deep. I've dug out callouses before and I've cut otherwise as well, and the land between new and old, fresh and dead is painful. I will require strength and resilience and verisimilitude

and I'll have to look up verisimilitude.

In all these years I have desired. I have desired to the point of exhaustion. 

Today my desires run like torrents of rain on adobe roofs racing for the faucet exits on all sides toward giving up.

We fight. Maybe I fight. I fight myself. I fight for the right to party...to live to excess, in excess listening to INXS. Listen like thieves was a christmas present from my mom. I was maybe 11 years old.  It might have been the last time I felt safe failing.

Oh, what a gift.