Rage, Rage against the dying of the light

Constrained by time and health with so much more to do I sit and write. So many people to see again, to talk with again.The places that I have loved, have they changed? The people that I have loved and the people who touched and changed me, what has time done in carving their spirits? Are they who I knew 5, 10, 25 years ago?

I have traveled from Maine to British Columbia. One summer we rode across the macadam of Route 2 and the top of America was ours. We camped and goofed our way to Otter Rock. Mosquito bit and sunburned we were on the road like Cassady, like every other American hero who ever took to the trails that are always there heading west. I wonder does that road exist anymore for anyone.

Wistfully I look west but I cannot go, not like that, not now and probably not ever again. The shackles on me are ones I have allowed to encircle me. I have family. I have property. My life is measured in biweekly paychecks. I rise at a set time and I go to sleep more or less at a set time. The people I see have been people I see for years now.

I have many regrets but I do have many joys. When the constraints have taken their toll, when the road is at its end I want to feel somewhere inside that lets me know I didn't screw this up. Sure time will erase me probably before the last person who ever met dies. But I am talking about something important, quietude, enlightenment, oneness you know the universal connection.

I want to know that what I did with my life was not just routine. Really. I am sure you get this right now is the one chance I get to live and love and laugh and rant and rage and rail and curse and sweat and drink and gorge myself on the good food and cry over stupid, stupid things. When it is done and as I am going out I want something more than regret or closure.

If I go out suddenly I want someone else to say there was electricity in his life. There should be murmurings of things like he was charged and unpredictable. He was twelve directions to the wild side all at once and there was never a moment I trusted him and I am not sure he really ever cared about anyone or gave a damn about anything but himself but he was sure passionate. Damn it must have been a hell of a ride/heartache for anyone who cared about that bastard. There is a connection that dude was always trying to make with the eternal with the holy with the profane and the profound. He was a chronic time waster an idler an infuriating waste of talent but damn he never let up. Sure he mailed it in from time to time but even in the dreck he was always throwing that zinger, that zesty bit out for your eye to catch.

Death is long, cold and eternal. Life is so incredibly short. To anyone who reads this please understand that I know I have faults and failings. Understand that I know I am so very limited in my intellectual capacity. I have read a couple of good books, but I haven't worked my way through A Remembrance of Thing's Past. I have dwelled too long on Merton's thoughts and musings and haven't really come up with much on my own. But I still get up each day hoping that I will.

I want to live for as long as I live with a fire inside of me. Maybe I want to be the whole package, inventive and creative, logical and calm, passion filled and caring. Maybe I want my mind to be working up to the very end jotting this and that down so that my kids will read it later and skip a few wrong turns. Maybe I want my musings to be floating around the electronic ether in the hope that someday some kid will search (I almost said google but that term will be lost in the mists) for one of you and find that I cared about you and made reference to you in a knowing and meaningful way in some sentence I wrote.

There was a time about twenty three years ago when death and I missed each other by about 1 yard and a 10th of a second. After the screaming for an ambulance in French no less, after the urgent rush to the hospital I found myself the next day in a park. The first tree I saw there was the most perfect tree I had ever seen. The sky was the bluest most perfect sky. The bird songs were so divine they sent chills up and down my spine. I want my last moments when they come to be like that, and nothing more.