Age is a home observed from a fixed perspective; as distance grows, the place gets smaller more difficult to live in – alien.
I have no choice but to be where I am now, find a way to live in that diminishing space. that sounds like enough.
“enough” – a limit defined.
When the time comes to pursue that definition If anything is wrong I’ll remember (my family)
These strangers with years between fly by night fair weather friends, receipts with formal education could tell me anything but, life insurance pays out five times my salary
So, I’ll ask “How much will my life cost me?” and we’ll laugh and laugh.
The hand raised high is hung on the hook of a distant light; digits cradling an unseen flower while shadows collect – condensation, beaded below lengthy limbs dropping into a river of darkness that ends hidden beneath sheer cloth.
Farther down slender legs – rushing waterfalls against the floor frozen in time; where the toes plunge the heel and the arch splash playfully above.
Though the music has stopped the moment remains poised for the future until then, we wait.
Young dreams will the soul inspire; all the insides set to fire tied to hopes by length of wire leading us through years most dire to be enough to admire through the glow of our desire. Thus breaks the mold of our birth at last of worth, we retire.
When I was …this tall the world was exciting a cosmos of wonder and potential
Not the void we know now.
At first, I knew nothing… but then then I was adrift in everything
I wanted to BE everything.
I could hardly function with all that was going on but I persisted
Experimenting
Reaching out and grabbing at…
Until somewhere out there calling out to me through the possibilities I heard a jarring word,
“Don’t”
And I didn’t, because what did I know? nothing.
And this was everything, right? So, when I heard don’t I didn’t. And the world got a little bit smaller a little quieter a little dimmer.
But I could see more clearly.
Here there were “dos”
And over there were the “don’ts”
And between the two no roads shall meet.
When I was …this tall
I was given a small page, to jot it down map it out define this space I found myself in,
There had become so many don’ts that the task became like working in negative space, snatching out the do’s from the soup of don’ts, and now I had enough understanding to find them on my own
I thought anyway
Until I shared that page with others proud of all the things I would do, my ability to navigate the sea of don’ts
And was told, again, “no
Don’t”
When my do’s would not line up with their expectations, they became a whole new kind of don’ts. shouldn’ts I called them.
Irresponsible, you may have heard them called. not productive.
And so the world became a little bit smaller a little quieter a little dimmer.
Now that I am …this tall,
I have progress reports, project plans financial projections,
Ways of tracking do’s but not ever truly acknowledging them, a piling on of do’s into a stack I have no choice but to call “will do’s”
I still hear that voice calling out to me from that growing void:
“No, don’t, not yet.”
But more and more it is starting to sound like my own, indiscernible even.
The world is small, quiet and dim, adrift in the cosmos mostly empty space.
Do not presume to find our end in fire reduced we are to subtle heat obscured. Look not for bombs, like rain from clouds, perspired for there is shelter in the war endured. Seek not your reason wrent from mind retired that sank beneath the waves of years matured. Best let the end become the pray unknown no part of life will find our deaths postponed.
“You can’t see it through the rust but there’s a real nice car beneath there,” my father would say with a smile; that expectant grin that invites you in. It doesn’t make you tea or coffee but it will gladly show you around.
His calloused hands covered in oil would read the pocked surface like braille blues and browns hiding brighter memories that he could somehow see clearly though he would rarely articulate.
If you were patient enough however you’d see it in his youthful eyes trapped in a cage of years indiscernible, a child was there, lost amongst trees though grateful for the forest.
He’d send another gulp of coffee down and nod in respectful silence as if all of us had agreed on something. To be fair, even when we didn’t, I wish we had. It always felt good to share a destination with him to hop into the front seat and just let him drive; rust be damned.
Liberty is dying sure but we’ve known that. Two months ago we heard it scream. On January 6th we waded through its blood barely able to keep our head above the flow.
In 2016 it’s attackers announced themselves their intent their accomplices and spent four years brutalizing it.
August 10th 2017: Stabbed
October 6th 2018: Stabbed
October 27th 2020: Stabbed
We’ve felt its pain in thousands of similar cuts its longing in empty positions its hopelessness in lack of protection
Liberty is all but dead and the only thing keeping it alive is the malevolence of its attackers who more than anything to torture it forever;
To keep you thinking somehow it will pull through.
To give them more time to pervert and destroy, manipulate the numbers to make fascist oligarchy look like democracy
Reminding you that your voice matters
But it doesn’t sometimes change requires more than words.
Let us remember, finally, that man on the corner that lonely soul who walked the streets alone took shelter beneath the trees before he could ever find it in our hearts.
Let us remember all the times he walked by smiled and waived as we drove to our lives each of us pursuing vastly different days to sleep more comfortably through the night ahead.
Let us remember that precious neighbor who wasn’t a neighbor at all, for we gave him no quarter lest that quarter depreciate our own
Let us remember the tragedy was not his death but rather the life we allowed him to live for when it was tasked of us to give we gave only the scraps we felt for us unfit.
In his death, let us finally remember that man on the corner though we couldn’t be bothered when it might have mattered.
Grow Gray With Me 