On Tilt

Originally written September 27, 2006

In poker, they call this being pot committed. The moment where you have put in too many chips to fold your hand, even if you were carrying that bluff all the way to the river.

I have crossed that point of no return; tonight I pushed in all my chips and, metaphors aside, just called the entire student body and faculty to show their hands. I am continued to be haunted by the ghosts of days of future past.

And tonight my thoughts have taken me back to an often overlooked and sometimes forgotten period in my life. We have come to accept that making my triumph return to politics two years ago brought about a new world for the big bad to conquer. Yet underneath it all that man existed in some other reality, just below the surface waiting for another chance to shine. We can be content in revealing that it all began that first summer in Texas.

There are many stories from that lifetime that have never seen the light of day; and our confession tonight does not resurrect those memories. What Texas did teach was a skill set that could be used in any given situation. A few months after the Texas incident we would arrive at the University of Southern California debate festival. The parties at night, the tournament during the day, I might not have slept for days but I rocked every moment of that weekend ending up with a silver platter semi-finals trophy stored in a basement on the light of the world tonight. Whoever was sent with us to keep supervision and control over thirty high school kids running wild in southern California should have been fired on the spot. I never knew what hotel room I had been assigned. Everything that we had taken out of Texas, that week in California brought the demons out once again and gave me a glimpse of what thing could come of it.

One year passes. I was back at the same tournament, on the same campus, with the same crew from a year earlier. I expected a weekend that held comparison to only the year prior. Yet nothing was the same. I remember thinking of the past everywhere I went, and I would see ghosts of the images that appeared as if they were yesterday. The memories of what was prevented us from living in what is. You can never go home again. All I see now is ghosts walking through these hallways, images of what I had to do over the past few years to ascend to power. And I watch as the outsider as we follow in those same footsteps of mine, toward that party we’ve been to every night, to the endgame. Am I running out of time, am I out of my mind? Have I been given another chance to bring about the big bad and power trip over and over, or am I living with the ghosts of days of future pasts?