Things Lost, Things Recovered
February 25, 2007Catherine's been on a tear lately cleaning up things around the house. Sifting down through the various strata of junk we've accumulated in our sixteen years together. I come home and there are piles of bags out on the porch to donate to one charity or another. It's good to let go of so much of that stuff we carry around for no good reason other than some unnamed fear of letting it go.
In digging through some boxes, she came across something that I wrote many years ago on a non-descript piece of paper untethered by the endless supply of writing journals that I seem to acquire year after year...
There are things we can never recover like the last turn before being lost in an unfamiliar place or the absent-minded slam of a door that wakes a sleeping baby. In this same way, we can never recover the single-minded spirit of our youth or the hard green ideals that grew overnight from the fertile soil of a life untested and free of responsibility.
Whenever I am in transit from one place to another, I walk through these abandoned acres in my mind. As the wheels beneath me spin out the miles from an end to a new beginning, I am deep inside this stand of trees that have no leaves and bear no fruit, yet still stand in opposition to the ground. Defying the solid reality from which they grow while all the time, branch by twig falling down as all things must --- becoming victims to gravity.
As I trace my hand reverently over the bark of each of these memorials to the man I once thought I could be, I am hollow inside, and filled with the wind that never stops blowing here. For the wind is change and it is indifferent to everything it touches. This forest of my youth may stand until I no longer draw breath, but it will never again be lush, green and invincable as it was when I was a boy and slept beneath its canopy of leaves. As a man, I am grateful for the boy who planted so many seeds.
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Review of Eddie's Attic Show on March 30th
Dylan Turns Six and Eddie's is Still the Place to Be
Charles Brings his Guitar and Plays Mine
Beyond Pat-Boone-Debbie-Boone: Gerry Hanson Rocks
Eatting, Writing, Living Large
A Trip to Wayne Henderson's Shop
Funny Blogs and Conversation Ticks
Infinite Possibilities at Checkout
Recording the New Screen Door Album
Dylan Makes Five and Becomes a Knight
Easter Bunny, Bacteria and Other Random Thoughts
Turning the Odometer on my Universe
Old Friends and Being an Artist
Dark Side of the Moon in Decatur
Zen and the Art of Guitar Playing