Honea Express

Archive for the ‘Random Is As Random Does’ Category

Popular thought suggests that there is a spark inside all of us. Personal experience is that some shine brighter than others. That doesn’t devalue anyone. It just is. Accept it or change it. It’s your spark.

Mine twists like a lighthouse in a windstorm. It is either lost through waves of bourbon or cutting through so much fog to find you like a spotlight. When I shine I want you to shine with me. It is lonely at the top.

We live in a land of opportunity. The cobblestones are plated gold. The dust a blend of pixie. But dreams are not granted to the masses. We must walk uphill in every way, knocking on doors and selling our wares and what passes for awareness. Don’t sell yours short. The highest bid is often the most careless.

And there are dark doors that figuratively represent whatever you need them to. Literally they are but hinged barriers to the path ahead. The light from the other side glows like a burning picture frame. It is an invitation. It is a warning. It has a handle that only needs to be turned.

Opening doors is why steps are taken.

It may require pause. New paths are hard to start and old paths end too quickly. The scene from the doorstep is of rolling hills and promise. My feet are tired and anxious. There is a stack of shoes in the foyer, each covered in potential and glowing with dust (the smaller shoes shine the brightest). The surrounding floor grows sterile and absent as it stretches down the hallway. I cannot remember if I am coming or going. I am paused, and I am wondering where to put my foot down.

Some look to the heavens when they have nowhere else to turn. Some look there first. I look up and I see stars that stretch forever. I find more perspective than answers.

Perhaps it is the time of year. Perhaps it is the wind in your hair. Life is a dance of wonder and melancholy, and each step brings a gasp, each spin leaves a smile. We are tussled and chapped, and the deeper the dip the more we feel alive.

Perhaps decisions are best made when we don’t know that we are making them. We are lost in the movement. We are paused before doorways. We are always looking for a better place.

That is what I am doing here, writing in circles and wasting language best spent on documents and deadlines — thirsty words wandering from waterhole to wonder and always with the stars in their eyes, always with the day’s dust behind them.

Popular thought suggests that there is a spark inside all of us. Mine is helping to keep us warm, and perhaps that is enough of a wonder for anyone.

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Photo by ImaRawkStar

There is a story there, beneath the fallen tree. Perhaps it sings like wind or runs deep like roots.

There is a story there, in the bright, green sea. It is full of trash and imagination.

The world keeps spinning and the stories blur between lives lived and souls squandered. There are those that do nothing but care, and those that do everything but. They all have their reasons. My job is to show it fairly and explain it just. Mine is not to justify.

I have hands held tightly in mine, and they are small and trusting. There are eyes on mine and they are sharp and watching. I find it hard to expand upon the ignorance and meaningless of it all.

The good comes easily enough, and we only need walk a moment before we find the wonder. It is the sunlight between the branches, the rain against our feet, a sky deep in all directions and the smile that should always be there.

Innocence is only fleeting because we choose to let it go.

The journey is not starting and it is not ending. It is a notch on a timeline filled with risks and careless stumbles, safety nets and milestones. The peaks are mirrored by so many valleys, each staggered with steps that sink and spiral, and the timeline folds and crumbles upon our back. We watch for rocks accordingly.

The peaks give to bend, but never break. From a distance the valley is a hammock swinging lazily, and the sweat beneath it pools and glimmers like an oasis. We have no choice but to kneel and drink. The salted waters taste of lessons and the sea.

The night is short on hours and long on longing. We have walked far and seen much and their world is as big as it is contained. I tell them what I can and strive to show them more. Most stories are never told, and mine are told too often.

Then there is proud and there is humbled and there are dances around the awe.

There is a story here, and I do not know if I am the hero, the villain, the reader or the writer, but we are all the characters, every one.

Just because I have to tell you that I’m tall, handsome and talented doesn’t mean it isn’t so. It just implies you have a loose grasp on the obvious, and I don’t blame you for that. I blame society. The obvious was much quicker to register when it wasn’t going so fast. We are all George Jetson on the treadmill. We all want off this crazy thing. Eventually. I’ll wait until I’m done winning.

There are things in the works and there are works unattended. It’s a vicious cycle. Like life (see, George Jetson). Once again I am standing at the crossroads and Ralph Macchio is about to blow the top off this joint. Steve Vai will be all, “Whaaa?”

My blogging career is going in a few different directions. I’m guest-posting. I’m speaking. I’m writing and editing at some incredible sites. I’m losing part of my livelihood, along with 900+ others at one site, and I’m in talks to rejoin some old friends at another. Things will be a bit tighter, but that’s been happening for a while.

For example, my jeans just ripped while I was typing this. Because this is an exercise. And I’m getting fat (see, 40). Hard to get much tighter than that.

You may or may not listen to the show we do (even though podcasts of said show are free). I get it, you’re busy.

You may not have bought my book. Don’t feel bad, I’m still writing it.

I have products to review that have been stacked here since Christmas.

What I’m getting at is that there are many paths open to me at the moment and some require more faith than others. They are all rewarding. They are all hard. They are not in direct competition with each other for anything but my time. However, they all draw from the same well, and it leaves me dry and in need of a drink. This is a metaphor, but I’m also mighty thirsty.

The point is that I felt like writing something for nobody, so I did.  I needed to write sentences that didn’t have a deadline, demand a meeting or have pitches pending. Then I published it because I can, and like a virtual message in a bottle of freshly-finished whiskey it has floated, and against all odds it has found you. And that means more to me than you’ll ever know.

The ground was frozen and it splintered like shards of glass when the log fell upon it. The log, itself frozen, was on its second fall in as many heartbeats. It had rebounded nicely off the side of my foot, followed its shot, and turned a 360 before landing with a loud “thud” across the aforementioned frozen ground that serves as my carport. On the weekends kids skate free.

My hands were full of other frozen logs that had shown the common courtesy to stack nicely within my cold, layered arms. Some wood is born unruly. Ladies, you know what I’m talking about.

I could feel my foot bleeding through my shoe. My very thick, very favorite shoe. I have another one just like it. However, the other one was standing firm against slippage and the subsequent ridicule that such occasions call for. One shoe stood tall and the other sacrificed all. It was a wash. With blood. My foot was bleeding and to put it in medical terms that you may be familiar with, it fucking hurt.

I was probably going to lose it.

But my family was cold and I’d left my beer inside and a whole list of other things that surely sound like reasonable excuses, so I made my way back into the house. A slip. A slide. A slip. A slide. One foot carrying the weight of the other. Medals for such things would be unavoidable.

When the healing began it was mostly due to the bubbles of peroxide and champagne. The bandage was purely cosmetic. The scab was long and thin, like fresh marker lines upon a barefoot drunk. Suddenly one foot had a mustache, and that, I believe, is where the jealousy began.

It used to be that my feet went everywhere together. They were always a step away from the other. They ran together, danced together — hell, they even dressed alike. Theirs was full of codependency and function.

Then came the scar and suddenly my left foot was out chatting up heels while my right sat home watching Daniel Day Lewis movies. The shoes, wisely, chose to stay out of it, but the legs seemed split on the matter. The whole thing just cracked my ass up.

My body was no longer a wonderland. It was a battlefield.

Last night the fire was waning low and I went out for more wood. My left foot was there, standing where shattered wood had met splintered ground, and my whole world had begun to melt without me.

My right foot said nothing. I stood there and gathered the wood. Carefully. The silence was awkward and the tension was thick. We walked back to the house together. Slowly.

They remained a foot apart.

Against the brightness of the rebuilt fire I could see that the scar was shrinking. It no longer resembled Boston Blackie. It looked more like Charlie Chaplin or an Obama poster. Or Hitler’s foot.

I fell asleep shortly after that and I didn’t wake till morning, despite the sound of distant dogs barking.

My mind wanders through alliterated fields of frost-covered firs. The cat has on her winter coat and she is silently stalking sunshine between the strikingly shrinking shadows of suddenly stark trees. Not the firs, they are evergreen.

The lingering lines left by sun-soaked lumber lean and bend across a sea of long-lost leaves.  Mostly, cherry and maple. I pine for an oak.

I hide behind routine and repetition.

It is a sunny day forgotten by clouds and heavy rain. It should spark something inside of me. I should rise to seize it.  Yet I am weighed down by unknown troubles and those I know all too well.  One day a friend, the next day family, and before them more of the same fighting the cancers inside.  The future holds more fights and harder fists.

Also: The future ebbs and flows on the ballots of ignorance.

And: The future is all we have. We are reckless with our right to squander it.

The process is always and ongoing. It matters more than anything, and it matters very little.

Very little, indeed.

I am graced by the laughter of little boys and the life that they rush into.  I fear to tread, and I am more the fool because of it.

Troubles come and troubles grow, between them breathe the blossoms. Piles are raked of memories, and moving on, and those we could not hold on to.  They are best left for little boys with needs for things to jump in. These are the leaves that fall from my tree, reaching up to meet the downward.

The cat yawns. My branches are bare and beautiful.