Look around me
I can see my life before me
Running rings around the way
I used to be. I am older now
I have than what I wanted
But i wish i had started long before I did.
And there’s so much time to make up
Everywhere you turn.
Time we have wasted on the way
So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the waters come and carry us away.

-CSN
-Wasted On The Way

I blew it.  I had been cooking along and going strong for more than 20 days.  And this was a promise I made to myself.  But in missing a post.  In missing putting something up on Sunday, I realized that sometimes, we need to break promises.  Or more importantly - sometimes, they just get broken.  Real life can be messy - and for a couple of days, mine was.

 This project was supposed to be my escape from the crazy ups-and-downs that dictate my path.  Just yesterday - those peaks and valleys moved me too far from my keyboard.  Was I lazy? Busy?  Misdirected? Preoccupied? Happy? Sad? Sleepy?  Who knows…in some minutes, I was none of them, but seconds later - I was all.

 All I know is that I broke a promise I made to myself.  That’s nothing new.  I do it all the time. I do it about my weight, my friends, my money, my life, my work….the difference is that this time, it’s bothering me. 

Hell - this is a new year (not explaining it.) maybe for once, i’ll just forgive myself.  I’ll forgive myself for missing a post, write it whenever I feel like it, and just slip it in for Sunday.  Maybe I’ll learn how to do it so well that I begin to forgive myself for everything. For jobs and friends and weight and accidents and abused potential. 

So weird.  This time - i didn’t let anyone down but me…i’m used to not caring about that sort of thing…but maybe that’s why it’s bothering me so much.

Older and Wiser, 
-the stranger 

P.S. Fuck spell check!

“Start tearing the old man down
Run past the heather and down to the old road
Start turning the grain into the ground
Roll a new leaf over
In the middle of the night, there’s an old man
treading around in the gathered rain
Well mister, if you’re going to walk on water
Could you drop a line my way?”
- A. Duritz / Counting Crows  

There’s something odd about seeing an empty cornfield during what still feels so much like summer.  It’s not that it’s unable to sustain life, and it’s not inhospitable, stony ground.  It’s quite the opposite.  I stood on those stalks today and felt them shatter and crunch beneath my feet. I could feel the heat coming up from the earth…and as I looked at the  fertile ground, and thought of the mixing of soil and nutrients, I noticed worms and grasshoppers moving through the ravaged field. 

And that may be the closest I’ll come to understanding the nature of life - but I want to grow.  This crop is yellowed and sharp -but I wish to be smooth.  It cracks beneath my feet, and it reeks of exhaust and tar and whatever the cars that rip by are spitting towards it - but I want to be vibrant.   But it endures, and despite looking like it has been clear-cut by daemons in Brazil, it will be back. It goes on.  That’s what it does…that’s all it does…and that’s what I pray for, for myself.

When I decided to try and reinvent myself just this one last time,  I looked up at my ceiling as if the face of God would be there and I literally said out loud, “one more try….please give me the strength to try again,” to no one in particular. 

And today…I wish I could be as resilient as that corn field. No matter how harsh the summer heat, no matter the floods, no matter the welting from pelting of hail and sleet, and regardless of the choking and strangling of the weeds that keep trying to kill those stalks…I yearn for a way to show strength in the face of it all.

And just like the corn that’s forced to push up and struggle and break ground and move stones and circumnavigate roots and rocks on its way to the sun, I too will endure.

While Summer just ended, Spring really isn’t that far away. Pray with me for a bountiful crop as I roll a new leaf over…
-The Stranger