It’s funny, you know. It’s not as though I don’t cease thinking in the moments between these rambles. It is constant. Perpetual for as long as I can remember, and I’d reckon as long as I last. Not even falling out of waking consciousness stops the ponderings and provocations. Nor does any altered state make the overall themes shake that much. Trust me, I’ve tried.

Yet, again, drawn to the blank page the clarity of what is to be said here still eludes me, while the drive towards this habit forces the confrontation. This literary mirror I make for myself. The reflected surface from which week to week, I cannot seem to look away.

Could it be all these stories that I fed myself on, all these years? Consuming other narratives in order to pick them apart and retrofit them to this singular cause called identity? Benevolently bound protagonists and justified villainy? Tales of courage, of defiance, or of beautiful desperation- all woven into the tapestry of self I find inward and regurgitate outward in whatever form might catch my fancy. Indulgent chronicles conglomerated into my very sense of being.

Could very well be that this is what draws this addict to adventurous anecdotes. But is that a good thing, or something more monstrous in deception?

It might be that benevolence is supposed to become harder fought over time. That, of course, is supposing that anything is even supposed to be at all. Fabricating order from the mess of being. Self determination versus the idea that all is, more or less, just plain chaos. And fickle little me, always seeming to bounce around and between these theories and themes.

That false dichotomy of heart and mind, knowing all the while that it is all just part of the same whole, this vicious creature called ego. Brought forth with a banquet of bad habits.

All in this irresistible cursed search for symbolism. Making meaning out of what gets more and more inconsequential the further out the perspective goes.

Apologies, I can get this way after a wedding.

There is this hope that always lingers about in autumn, despite history, that when all this grows back anew, something more profound and beautiful will emerge. And though that is certainly not the world that emerged out of last winter, here I still am, hoping along. A fool. A dope, perhaps. Yet the urge occurs to fight onward for that optimism.

It could be that the hope is inducing the feeling of fatality within aspects of my faculties. Could also be this is the temporary cost of too much ethanol and dancing, and the recoil from parking lot singing outside the closed bar an hour or so before dawn. That’s right, I can still hang with the best of them. Or worst. Matter of opinion, I’d suppose.

There’s a line I heard today. Dirty folk punk tune.

‘Freedom doesn’t have a purpose.’

Simple enough, but it has been going about my head since hearing it. Two ideas that humans so often publicly and proudly value. Freedom and purpose. And whether either is ever really true, which is up for debate, but it seems to stand that they could exist on opposite ends of even an imaginary scale. That to be truly free is more impossible the stronger the sense of purpose is. That even when honest and beneficial, having a sense or drive towards purpose creates shackles of varying degrees. It could be that such ambitions and objectives close doors and windows that otherwise might be open. A more focused, singular existence, and therefore, bound to a path that limits itself.

And yet, with freedom, the more total it becomes, the more aimless it is. That to be truly free, one would not even be able to make a decision that would direct energy and attention in any particular direction. That each choice concretely, or even partially made, chips away at and confines the otherwise listlessness of freedom.

How’s that for a bit of paradoxical thinkings? Pretty standard operating procedure in this ol’ noggin. Not sure how well it fits in yours. Though, if you’re here with me now, you probably get the idea.

There was another set of lines, ones not new though still struck with potency, as oft is to happen when in the torrent of thoughts that occur when on lengthy drive across state lines.

‘The real truth about it is, no one gets it right. The real truth about it is that we’re all supposed to try.’

In all these years, several hundred thousand or so for this species, in no singular lifetime, did anyone ever get everything right. The human experience, even among the best and brightest and most benevolent and benign, not a one ever went all the way without a mistake. Most of us make them regularly, if not constantly. Is this an excuse? Of course not. There is a grade to mistakes, like there is for so much else, and along the way lines get crossed where insoluble change is made.

But despite that, we try. And that might be the most basic purpose that can be dreamt up for us straight spined apes. And the first step away from that anarchic idea that is freedom. But whatever it is, grandiose or microscopic, honorable or dastardly, selfish or sacrificial- there is a common drive among us to try. Whatever it is, how ever it gets attempted, at least for a little while- we try.

It doesn’t last forever, and some folks end up with shorter stints than others. Sometimes, by choice. Deciding on the ultimate purposelessness. Oblivion. Something the guy who wrote and sang those lines knew a fair enough amount about. As happened for him, the ride runs out, trapped in a bottle before forty.

Now, this is another one of those possibly poor habits of mine, that is, digging into wisdom of words of someone who drank himself to death- but I tend to take the cautionary aspect of all that while still holding reverence for the depth of thought and emotion. And I fear not the destitution of the human condition. Or at the very least, such perspectives are not unknown to me.

For whatever it is or means, those are some of the best stories. In the opinion of your humble narrator, at least. The ones that hurt. That tear at the soul in a way that only one of us who has seen enough of the world might know. Heartbreak is more addictive than simply fading away, and our tragedies linger longer than our laughter, or so it so often seems.

That is what life is about though, right? The stories we tell of and to ourselves and others?

I thought of this, driving across vast hills littered with the dead and dying remains of another summer gone.

I thought of that which is lost, eternally. And that what was never had to begin with. I thought of inescapable sadness, and the fruitless rage against this indifferent universe. I thought of joys, all shared and celebrated. And love, perhaps that ultimate betrayer of freedom. The kinds in which I have and continue to know, and that which remains foreign, seeming, perhaps, perpetually. And the people in my life, both present and missed, some in permanence.

And, of course, ever the narcissist, I thought of myself, and this story I am weaving from these fibers of space and time. Of what was. Of what is. Though, to be honest, the what will be still seems so elusive at the moment. Not that it will be, but what that will be, that future, still holds. What freedoms are gone, some long ago. And what purpose serves as worthy of the sacrifice. What in between those two destinies is still worth the effort of playing with. There is a clock ticking, after all. And someday, though not soon, this energy will be all used up.

I hope that by the end there was something worth saying. But there I go with that hope again. Ne’er do well, never quite learning his lesson.