It is a reflective time of year, I suppose.

Been dwelling upon the past, which, of course, can only go on so long before bleeding in with toxicity. I manage to manage it well enough.

But, you see, I had a letter to write. And that required at least a five year jump previous in the timeline. Something I would have never bothered to dream a decade or so ago. Not that there isn’t a magnitude of views to look forward to, but I cannot help but know that there are many a spectacle behind me of some grand prominence. At least, from this perspective.

I still have to proofread and re-scribe the whole affair. Going with the handwritten approach. I don’t expect legibility from first draft chicken scratch. I save that for here.

And where is here? I know it is somewhere familiar. Despite the varying in machine and locale, I’ve been here many a time before. A natural place for residence, and yet, the reflection inquired knows that something about the latter is neutered in a way where the former freedom used to ring. Something to do with consequences, of both the age and the conjoined lives dependent on my own that did not dwell in ages now long gone.   

So, I ponder upon the lost, and the yet to be found in these therapeutic literary excursions.

Five years ago, I had just returned from a land I had never been. Five years ago, I set myself upon the most musically creative year had thus far. Five years ago, I just started the climb from my closest to bottom. And despite world events that prescribe some wide eyes on doom, I have yet to truly return to the woe from whence I came.

Five years before all that, was the peak egomania. I decided myself in some deranged divine. Inflated by my holistic approach to attention mongering, the crown of late bloomer rested upon the same skull that wonders about it all now. High on my own fumes, as it were. Blind to the bounty that truly lie about me. Oh, to be young again. Insatiability inspired by instilled nevermind.

Another quarter score before that was a disciplined loner, affixed upon the out and getting over all the childhood that defined more than my conscious mind may ever permit recollection of again. The kid of the school bus, petrified of the opposite gender that may have been more inviting than he’d ever grown to realize. And, perhaps, better off for his ignorance.

So, naturally, the inquiry shifts in the regular segment towards that unknowable ahead. Another five from here, where might this lowly sentience be?

As they stripped me of my soothsayer license, I take a career risk in even attempting the thought. And if all the ‘what was’ weighs as any kind of ample warning, I should stay far away from any acclaimed specifics.

But barring catastrophe, I don’t forecast all that much to disparage the current pace. In the same place, child to raise and dreams to chase- or at least mildly pursue. My labors somewhat the same, in both income and incendiary inspiration. Perhaps some love, but I’ve learned to neither hold nor breathe too heavily into such flames. Despite the widespread synthetic and algorithmic ways predominate in romantic initiation, I aim to hold steady upon the classical sort of ways. A chance meeting has always led to better than the artificial constructions. I am who I am, I say.

Perhaps not as relentlessly liberated as once was, I don’t know if I see that as a hinderance. Naivety, though certainly excited, is no way to sustain a life of such thinking. Not as I aim to keep getting at. As I gather myself after the first long haul of this living, I know that I still have a few more to go. I want to earn my weariness, from all the ways and woes and situations that I can manage to go.

And there is plenty more for me to go. I know. I might see you there. Or maybe only here. Or not even that much. But you cannot take that ‘what once was’ from me. Not more than time already has. And if I can rob that infernal clock of the experience, I fear no mortal in the matter.

Whatever memory I may share with you, dear reader, know that I have likely never let it go. Even if repositioned in stature, I shall not retract the once was there to be. That is for me. For I. And you, if you so decide.