Returned from a weekend away from my place of residence to find the cornfields no longer, replaced by tractor treaded mud and browning, drying, fading stumps of former stalks. The cycle continues. Dead until born again.

Not that I think products of agriculture, no matter how alive, hold memories of their past lives. I don’t think that they hold much of memories at all, though I could be wrong. It’s just not my brand of spirituality, if there even is such a state of being as that within me to begin with. Though, there must be something, or else, why would I continue to engage in such foolish behaviors such as this?

Was pondering beliefs, these days as of late, and the dangers held inherent within them. On personal scales (screams into the void) and the larger, civilization and species sized types (screams louder into a bigger void). And how ideas of what is and isn’t, and what should and should not be, according to all sorts of whosevers all overlap and clash, and interlope and engage one another. You know, all insane certainties and impossible probabilities. And the knowledge that we cannot all be right, and, more likely, we are all of us wrong, at least a little bit. But probably more like a lot of bit.

I tend to think, not always inaccurately, that the certainty folks hold outwardly for themselves and their ideas can so often have an obscured, or inverted relationship with the truth. Yours truly, included. And not meaning the inward type of being sure, which can so often be unconscious and borderline incomprehensible, but rather the kind that gets exclaimed to any willing, or unwilling, ears or eyes, or other applicable sensory ports. When set so sure in proclamation, I cannot see how doubt cannot reign heavily within, even when in total disguise to the wielder. A distraction tactic deceiving even the caster.

It may have to do with my own uncertainties. Or my disdain for absolutes. Or the trust that nothing in this life while we’re living is static. Even that which stays with us for years, or the entirety of our brief existence, changes. Even if only in our hearts and minds. Or spirits, if that’s your thing. If everything remains the same, unlikely, of course, our perception of it would still alter. Or the perception of us from outside. Or, when everything around us changes and the perceptions remain steady. Or just the distance that time creates between moments. From the ever-fleeting present to the ever-expanding past.

I think of a place, a location of a few days passed, and how the same place was once, years ago. A scene remembered from what seems like another life, replayed in my head as I stood in that space in a most recent present. Back then, hunched against the chain-link fence, among the cigarette butts and spilled beer, all exhausted and destitute, and younger, waiting to start a set for a band about to implode upon itself in some last ditch effort at glory’s impending demise. I thought of the farewell that occurred in that moment, for the first time in a long time. A final type, and was, if my recollection is correct. Couldn’t even see the face. The streetlight brightly backlit, so only a silhouette showed, until the steps separated, forever.

The room was smaller than I remembered. And the lot next to it, the one with that dramatic fence, got sold a few years back to one of the chop shops on the block. So, the world turns, again, and again. The echoes of memory set into a place, as time continues to pass those moments by.

It is my hope, my desire, to build this back into something that it hasn’t felt like in a while. Maybe something that it has never been. Persistence is good and all, but the need for a breakthrough seems pertinent and yet ever evasive. And not only here, but we need not get into the many other catastrophes of my existence here and now. Have to leave something for the songs and stories, as though there is even the slightest threat of shortage there. My existential economy is booming with unadulterated abundance, only I continue to fall short of making sense of it. Of expanding it beyond the woes and worries and whys of this life just passing by.

I find myself not as worried about my physical age, but rather how young my heart still feels in comparison, and how little there seems to be to do with it. Not so concerned with what has been done, but what there is still left to do, and there is so very much. And still, within all that, I regularly find myself in some sort of fugue state regarding where it is I wish to go next. Part of the problem being that there are only so many options as part of my current life’s allowance. Something that has been filling me with frustration and forlorn, and all sorts of other less-than-ideal emotions that may or may not also start with the letter F.

Yet, I wonder, how many times can one keep paying the cost of hope? Not that I plan on relenting the fight anytime soon, if ever. I suppose I’m just a bit impressed that I continue to be able to find ways to handle the toll, though admittedly not always the best of ways. Even if stunted and stalled at each end and beginning, and back again, the price of being forward facing gets continually paid.

My apologies. I vaguely recall claiming an effort to make these contemplations seem less morose. As with all things, it is not without the expending of certain energies. And that time off from work I thought was occurring, isn’t for another month still. So that minor existential crisis is being worked out. Fearing that the leaves will all be wilted and gone by then. That idea of missing out that has been somewhat inescapable since days long ago.

As another day fades, as the nights grow longer, I think of all there is left I wish to do. To be. And grapple with the knowledge that not all can be met. Some things must be left behind. Some things, inevitably, get lost. A lesson that seems to keep kicking my head and chest in, this year in particular.

But with each setting of the sun, I trust the promise of another dawn. And with that, knowing that there is still so much to be that I cannot yet even conceive. I couldn’t have predicted where I’d be at this very moment from a mind in the not so distance past. So, it stands to reason, that what there is still to be might be totally beyond even my imaginations ability to conjure. And still, hope lingers, both benevolent, benign and malignant. That there are still good days yet to come, trusting that devastation is always a likely possibility on such roads.

Still, connecting with the proper people and places has been working, in the hope that beyond surviving, I might get myself to something closer to thriving. Knowing full well, that even when that gets achieved, it is temporary. Nothing gold can stay, they say. But with that, even the absolute dogshit moments of life don’t last forever. Even when it seems like they will.

And as good as my intentions attempt to be, I’ve made enough mistakes to know that there are plenty more left for me to get about making. Though, if something can be learned from each of them, it will not have been a total waste.