I couldn’t see the moon tonight. Might be that it isn’t out yet, or is hidden behind the veil of clouds cast about the piece of rock I call home. It was bright last night. Perhaps I should have paid better mind while it was here, but alas, I took it for granted. As goes with hindsight. As goes with the beauty that is impermanence.

It is my aim for these words to never appear contrived, a feat which I regularly feel the air of failure around. Striving for some unattainable answer, to questions that I may never fully understand. Precious things that go away, as all things must. Knowing this, of course, makes it no easier to bear. May even make it worse. Oh, the ignorant, and their simple joys I am too self-righteous to see as much more than folly.

My skin is raw from the unshaded sun of early spring. There is still dirt beneath my fingers from my feeble attempts as a sentient being to shape the land. But a garden, I must grow. Greater than the one that was here last. If for nothing else but as guide for some future garden, greater than what my might and imagination may ever be able to conceive.

This day is done, but upon the morrow marches another one. And, like a fool, I reside the unrequited hopes of what is now yesterday into what is slowly becoming today. Another hour, according to the clock, in what is soon to be marked by the metrics of time and calendar as the past.

Was talking earlier today, with a dear soul, about wanting so much from life. In the face of, and perhaps, in spite of the despair that is so regularly cast down upon us mortal beings. Thoughts of loss, and attempting to still gain something despite the eventual futility. Because of that futility, it seems to occur to me now.

As history shows, all human attempts end in failure, of some kind or another. For even the fullest human life, is pittance compared to the earth and the moon and the stars. Things so celestially magnificent, that our temporary organics pale in comparison to that. Yet, it might be that it is within those imperfections, that a greater understanding might be got at.

I had aimed to complete a difficult task today. Such a task is still left undone. Might have been out of necessity. Might have been out of cowardice. Either way, it has been left to some tomorrow. Am I kicking the can down the road? Sure, but it seemed the best move considering all the things that I’ve been considering.

  My apologies. We watched a film, my daughter and I. Something at the pinnacle of human story telling, derived from a tale scribed a millennia or so ago, from a story I’d imagine even more ancient than the telling left in writing. So old, that it might have even been true. In a world still brimmed with magic. The sort of world that a cynic might label as more ignorant.

Shook us both to the core, though I managed to conceal my astonishment better. Look at me, being more emotionally void than a nine-and-a-half-year-old girl. Like that makes me some sort of big shot, tough guy, or the like.

But the story got me to pondering (I know, crazy right? Me, pondering around every sort of blink of an experience I have).

But I thought of value. What we hold to be importance, both as each of us as individuals, and each of us together as a larger whole, as a human species. I thought of what is genuine and what is facade. And when we neglect the former for the alure of the latter. Our misconceptions of what seems important, as opposed to what we know in those inexplicable and illegible bouts of soul to be the fights worth fighting, or the wounds worth enduring.

I thought of devotion. To people. To our environment. And to our ideas. And how easily dismay our better resolutions can fall victim to the more fantastical never-to-be’s. And I think of the cost our dedications, and similar such aspirations- the cost that can have on those that reside around us.

Yet, I feel reconfirmed in the appreciation for the finite. In the basis of our beings, in our existence as an experience. As an idea. Life, time, and the very rock upon which we claim our home- all set to fade and wither eventually, no matter the length of duration each might have. This too, shall pass. Our grief. Our joys. Our very identities. All destined to be little more than whispers, until eventually returning to the abyss from which it is said that all of this comes from to begin.

Yet all this talk of impermanence and passing, I could see how it might get one down.

I suppose it is worth the reminder, just in case you might have forgotten, that nothing being able to last indefinitely is the very essence of what we shaved apes would claim as an experiential divine. And the power in seeing, and believing, the extraordinary where otherwise might only have been seem some simple unfulfilling answer to the vast quandaries, inescapable and beyond our understanding. There were thoughts about the idea of possession, and the fruitless task that ultimately always ends up being. The idea of laying claim to items and lands and souls, as though even our own soul would be something capable of retaining in grasp.

 There was a line, in this film, which I plan to throw in all of this metaphysical muck. You can ask me about the movie sometime after this rant, in a place that isn’t the thin line drawn between my mind and this page that was formerly so blank. The line, is, as follows-

     ‘Answer back, simply by being alive.’

     I cannot recall the context, but it doesn’t matter. I plan on crafting all new context for it here, and now.

     When my thoughts run back and forth across those words, I think of the struggle. Not the little ones that plague lives of all shapes and sizes from day to day, to day. Rather, I think of the big one. The struggle. The only one that is our known objective from the day we come screaming and kicking into this plane of sentience.

     The struggle to be. The ‘what’ and ‘who’ we are against the tide of time and age, the great oppressor of humanity. To exist as some genuine article, despite our dust bound destiny. To be, despite the ‘what was’ and ‘had happened’, and how that sculpts us away from preconceived identity tries unto some other angle, one that may have been imperceptible not far back into a personal or societal past.

     The fight onward that I cannot seem to shake. I know that isn’t the case for everyone, but it is for me. And if you give me some time and an open heart, I bet I could at least inch closer to convincing you, as well.

     I know, tragically, that onward is not what everyone does, or what they get.

     The battle between dreams and reality, and how points get crossed no matter what efforts get made to the contrary. Moments, passed. People, gone. Emotions no longer conjurable, replaced instead by the kind that you cannot escape.

But maybe our hell has something that paradise lacks. Grit, or heart, or something equally or approximately as interesting. I think of the boredom in perfection. Of the lack of character in the idyllic. And the profound sublimation in all our faults and follies. All our beauty in our impurities, or at least most of it. And the disdain, at least within your humble narrator personally, for the quest of overly idealistic aims, with no room for exchange or adaptation.

She was crying, my daughter, at the end of this tale. I was, as well, I’d suppose. In my own non-visual, non-verbal manner regular engaged in such moments. I save my sobbing for the ghosts, generally. They lack the means to inform others of my tears, as far as I can tell.

But still, I did not aim to make the young lady feel ashamed of being emotional. Sure, we work to not be overwhelmed, but what kind of monster would raise their child to be void and numb?

So, I told her, It is perfectly fine to be moved by a great story. There is absolutely no shame in that.

So, she settled down and got into bed, way later than most Mondays. But she is on spring break, so a bit past bedtime is not the crime it usually might be.

And, as I bid her goodnight and closed the door, The Parting Glass began to play from the small speakers in her bedroom. I thought again about what I still haven’t told her, that which I must at some point. And I thought, perhaps she already knows, in some way that she doesn’t understand or can’t explain.

Might be that we know more starting out that we tend to remember. And we do all this forgetting along the way. To fit molds, to make names. To claim an existence that never should be, even were it possible at all in the first place.

Maybe we’ll get to the bottom of it next week. I’m not reading this one back, so you’ll have to forgive any mistakes, if you would be so kind.

I stepped outside again. Still no moon, though I know its there, somewhere. But the sound of running water was heard from behind the house. And the slightest whisper of the breeze. That’s more than enough for me to settle on, for now.