I think of purpose. And destiny, if there is such a thing woven within the fabric of our doomed little sentience. I think of whys and if, and in so many ways, that makes me just like most others. Which then demands, in all its barbaric eloquence, the question of why it is I ever try to write anything at all.

And yet I ponder upon how something cyclic could be made seen by humanity’s actions, if using the past’s molds as modela. If this is but another Rome, or Babylon, or the sort- if this is just all something that will be summed up in a mass-produced chapter mostly ignored by some daydreamer of a generation yet to come. And I wonder if I am too bold to assume that these times, in which we find ourselves, will even merit as much as a chapter. Or, inversely, if my own mind be too feeble to comprehend the magnitude of the situation at hand, as we dance upon the species’ razor edge, shoes all slicked with blood. And blood all soaked in wine.

And despite the weight of such planetary concerns, I wish for something new and shiny to write about. Something pretty, to poetically pry me from here and place me in some haze of forlorn ambition. Perhaps some person, to place blame of my ignorance upon.

     I have avoided holding my breath. Which has thus far, proved a vital survival tactic.

     But anyway. How are you? Holding up? Wishing for more, or better? Wishing for clarity or aim?

     Or be you so lucky as to find complacency? And not that fabricated kind of mixed laziness and fear, preventing much movement, regardless of risk, but the true kind. At a peace with what be and who the person that resides in your perspective has come to understand as identity.

     Good on you, then. If, aforementioned, has come to pass.

     Not me, though. I still itch. And unlike the unsatiable sorts that found me in younger days and different years- this itch grows dull. Persistent, and nearly constant, but reduced in power to a point where it can be ignored more soundly than white noise. Yet, in those moments where I think it almost forgot, the thought of permanence enters. Does the itch stay dull until its host (your humble narrator) ceases to exist? Or does it sit churning unbeknownst beneath the surface, in wait for some proper stoking?

     Selfishly, I think of bars. The ones that serve booze, or course. I intended to sit at a few unknowns in proximity. Casually consuming libations and literature, with no intention of being acknowledged, but still existing within an immediate realm ‘round other humans, there for other purposes. Strangers, preferred. Hard to read in a bar where everyone knows you. Or so it is, for me. Folks keep talking to you.

     Forgive me, I know there is still so much suffering and pain in this world. But. There always has been. And still, by far, in most categories, there is less of it than there has been for most of the documented, observed and certainly fabled history of this species on the planet.

     And yet, we are forced to contemplate vast and overwhelming doom regularly. Forget anything considered political. Doom is something the last few generations of this race we call human has had to think of in some way since 1945. And not the ramblings of soothsayers and prophets, but hard, calculated, scientific fact sort of doom.

     Still. Triviality has reached pinnacles quite possibly beyond the comprehension of our ancestors. And luxuries of a caliber that one prepared to argue might be able to claim as abhorrent decadence. A new paradox yet unseen, one which the ramifications have little in terms of historical comparison, and yet infiltrates every aspect of almost every living being on the planet. The disconnection as a cost of all this connectivity. Never closer. And yet, never further.

     And now might seem a logical place for some answers. Were this a brief thesis (which would be a great band name), now would be the time which the solution to the proposed conundrum should be introduced.

     But, I didn’t do the homework. I’ve been daydreaming. Of the past. Of love and loss and Armageddon. Of hypotheticals to never be and conversations never had. Living in my head. Like many of you, I’m sure. Though I don’t know what your head is like. Not exactly. I’ve come to understand that it is almost certainly not the same as mine. I hope yours works with you a little easier.

     And I hope you don’t have the trepidation around your outlets as I’ve been having. Particularly in this arena. The itch that won’t go, and yet nothing to reach the inflicted aspect. Not quite. Not directly. And hope as I might, whether it will be stoked or settled into is not yet determined. Nor may it ever be. By myself, at least.

     Perhaps the historians will have it all sorted out. As someone else gazes gallantly upon a partly opened window, with the dreams in their head about how it will all work out so nicely- once their hands get hold of the reigns.