THE ROCK: Chapter 5

GIANT ANTS DANCING AROUND WITH TOP HATS

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I love comedy.  Not the easy, one-liner, spoon fed sitcomy crap but the bold, unapologetic, nook and cranny kind.  The kind that creeps up on you in unshakable fashion with unspeakable precision and for me, that's Louis CK.   But it took me years to find him.

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The year that I was selected as one of San Antonio's 'Rising Stars' was the year that I decided to betray my Texan roots and move on.

While in college, I had built a consulting practice that focused on commercializing technology and within just a few short years, I was at the top of my game but it wasn't good enough.  Texas had a great and growing nucleus of high-tech and bio-tech startups but I wanted to be a part of cutting edge research and that meant going to either the West or East Coast.

I choose the latter and loaded up Malcolm and Murphy and Anna, my girlfriend at the time, and we moved to Watertown, MA, into a rental a block off the Charles River.

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I don't think the terms solace or contentment apply to men like me but we can come close enough and walking along the Charles with Malcolm and Murphy on our daily constitutional got me as close as I'd ever been.

The beauty is indescribable.  There's a bend in the river where time seems to stop, where the light catches its surface refracting a spectrum of colors and a stillness to it.  We'd walk it up and down, back and forth in awe of the Charles.

I still remember that place with absolute clarity not only for its stunningness but as a simple, singular answer to the question I had at the time as to why I moved there.  Yes.

Certain as I was of my life choices and damn well determined to do great things and then, on one of our daily walks, everything changed.  My whole life reduced down to a dog walk along the Charles.

When Malcolm limped.  

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