Thought I would play more music today. Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty played, just thought upon my original scheme of the day that I’d be more centric in it. But ‘twas not so, at least as of now. And as far as today goes, it’s just me and these personalities left to craft some sort of something.

And here is where the stand is to be made.

And instead of some recorded performance brought forth from some crystalized time via shaped pressed plastic or some more new-fangled digital process, I choose instead now to listen to the last cries of this summer soon to fade. Never to be heard again, no matter which similarities might resound within it from both past and the perceivable future.

I think I’m making the right call with my auditory consumption for this here clicking and clacking, but I’ve been wrong before. With that, and no shortage of other choices. Many few of those, I’m sure I’m still somehow too thick to understand. Might be one day I might, but holding breath is ill-advised.

But whatever I am, I resolve to be a man of more discipline each day. And being that it is Monday, and would be, in fact, the evening time- we must find ourselves here again. Even if all this amounts to is the wringing of my metaphysical dirty rag of a mind- wrought it must be, whether a trash heap be its final destiny or not.

     So, what you got killer?

     The idea of attention has been ruminating in a free-range sort of way, as of late. In its broader sense, for sure, but I reckon I’ll get down to a whole mess of specifics within all that thinkin’ to come about hereafter.

     There’s the bout we have within ourselves.

The where’s of where our attention from within resides, without. What occupies the mind, in this case here, mine. What crosses the synapses and all that shit to float in the prominence of my perspective. The funny thing about this here, is that it requires me to ponder outside the parameters of the dimly lit room which holds my currently bodily residence. Thinking beyond the here and now. For it is just I, and me, within these moments. As far as I can tell. I could track some thoughts back a few minutes ago, to where I temporarily parted ways with a half dozen folks I’m surely certain I’ll see again. I could think back not much further than that, to my waking hours, emerging from short, yet potent nocturnal visions that many say break down the inner psyche of this meat vessel, and all the other meat vessels we call kin. What’d ya call em again? Those sleep thoughts us humans have? Dreams? Was it?

     I did indeed dream last night, though brief in comparative measurement of these waking metrics of time now held. As you likely know, you could dream a millions years, and be asleep for only a few minutes.

The featured cast of last night was varied. A wide-ranging reach of interpretations of folks thought and felt fondly of my days now passed. There was a ghost, I suppose. Though very much alive within the unconscious construct, he is dead as far as the best information I’ve been able to ascertain. Been that way a while, and hadn’t seen him in the living for longer before that by a decent leap and/or bound. But there he was. And boy howdy, was I ready for his advice, equally at least, to the eagerness I had for it when it lived in the what once was called present. What do they call that? The past, right?

     A Beatles fan, he was. Still is, if spirits can manage such feats. And I’d bet if any entities could, they’d manage some decent Beatles fandom. Them spirits.

     There was another player that stands out. A soul that reminded me to dance, both in the actuality of our crossing existences, and within this dream construct so recently had. Still existing on this plane, she is. And with her both in my imagined and I’d bet in her own actuality, a notion once known as so important. Something I had almost forgotten, until the reminder was brought forth in the only state of mind I cannot guard myself from. That thought being this. Whatever pettiness I might associate with the lost or never to be found, I am glad to remember this- if the music compels you to move, you’d best get on and do it. Doesn’t regularly get much more straight forward than that.

     Been a great stretch of years since either of them had been seen by this here narrator, yet there they were, sure a sunlight, right up until an alarm brought me back to this plane, which I tend to call my proper existence. As we all do, for those of us writing and reading here. That is a peculiar thing about dreams, though. Not a lick of anything feeling more real when you’re going about in their realm. And yet, so effortlessly dismissed once the waking program reboots.

Probably for the best. I’ve always been a better dancer in my dreams. But not for lack of trying in consciousness, altered or otherwise.

Yet for all that realness in my unguarded mind, that is not the standing we face now. And seven hundred words of dodging is but the appetizer of the impending pounding of existential self-analysis I always know can never be avoided. Not here. Not for long, at least.

And in the cosmic scale of deeds right and wrong, I gather I am easily in the black for today. Meaning not in some sort of debt, that being, being in the red. For all you economists out there. Some joy was brought about, at least in partiality through my doings, or have been dones. And I even managed to serve myself, a healthy bit, through activity and some layman’s intellectualism with a good friend. Might have even made a fun day for a wee fellow, not but a quarter of a decade old, by doing little more than throwing rocks into a stream. Or a river, as he called it. And I dare not challenge such a profound perspective.

     And, yet.

     This hopeless bastard (me) still seems to seek more squeeze from a day plenty else would think of as dried.

     And if this isn’t your first rodeo in this pen, I’m sure you’re aware of at least a few avenues of distraction and deflection that might be got down, easily traced by the freshest of footsteps.

     But be it bad habit or a betterment of self, I don’t think I ever aim to truly squash those inexplicable desires so often found unattainable, philosophically speaking. And I say let reign the symbology, particularly in such times and places. Like this sort of one. This summer’s end.

The march towards the autumnal. Certainly different from the last, and yet all the same tune. That seasonal decay I take for granted, meaning I assume it will bloom again. It likely will, but I know from hearing the hum-drum of my own cardiac pump, that I will not be around for all of them. Plenty more to be had at, don’t get me wrong. But for a guy who often thinks in centuries, on a daily time to time, even my own ego won’t allow me to contemplate my own existence beyond the normal biological timelines.

But the idea, or better, the sensation of spirit knows that the right enough action echoes if not for eternity, at least a little while longer than these flesh bags have got in them to go. Might be a small something done or said today that shall go on to live well beyond the time that any of the names I hold for myself, both contrived and documented, manages to survive.  

In a world without fairytales, I still manage to make a few of them. Or at least facilitate a few off-brand generics. Which generally work, just as good.

Because, somehow, I still seem certain that cynicism is not a shield from that which means you harm, but rather, that which holds potential to strike again so resoundingly that thing we call a soul. It is the balance between that, and being an easily duped rube that plagues my ponderings. Not allowing expectations to dictate any affirmations or assertions. And equally impermissible being the inverse. Not allowing what was or is wanted, to blockade what is more mightily needed.  

But lucky me, I’ve always got a few folks around that argue any unreasonable pessimisms I manage to conjure. And still within me, lives that spark that keeps me onward. To know, more. To see and feel and heal, more. To live not just another day, but as many full days as my might can manage. And push it just a it further beyond that, too.