Self

It's about 6:00 in the afternoon on a Monday. My wife is coming in from Boston tonight and my son is staying at his grandparents. I'm alone and weird. A storm softly grumbles in the darkening distance. 

Sometimes I wonder what will come out of me if I ever grant myself a moment of self-expression. Self.. I've changed my 'self' a lot. I'm barely the same person I was in many of these photos scattered about this blog. I scarcely recognize him, but this isn't a post to dwell on the past. I don't really care about the past anymore anyway. I no longer cringe when I think of a younger version of myself, I just can't do that to myself anymore.

This is a new me. There are many new beginnings of 'me'. I like the different characters I've brought about in my 41 years of borrowing this shell. This new one is that of a father, and after wearing that hat I hardly spend anytime imagining any other way of living. Nothing really felt important to me the way it felt to have a son. This is also the dust-stained hat of a traveler who is almost ready to see the world again. (It felt really good to write that.)

The thunder grumbles and my neighbor Steve begins to pick up the pace as he walks a bit faster towards his destination at the end of the street. 

I've been talking to God, that is, praying. I try to pray out of gratitude more so than asking favors, but I've decided to go about this newfound faith in a very honest way. I talk to God about anything I would talk to a close friend about. I'm honest with God. I try to be. The more honest I manage to be in prayer, the better things are for me, and I think there is a deep lesson there to be learned.

I'm not a big guy. I'm like 5'9", and I can't do anything about it. I'll be in a circle of four or five dudes and I'm always the short one. I decided that since I can't do anything about it I might as well like it. I'm this age and I still think about such things. Ego is a disease I can't seem to cure. I'm trying, I mentioned that, right? 

I watched this reel the other day with David Lynch, and he's interviewing someone who seems to be a close friend. He asked his friend to describe himself, and his friend said, 'self does not exist.' That has stuck with me for days now, and I think that might be the lesson that God is trying to show me. Maybe the last few chapters of my life were about releasing the desires of self and now I finally have a chance to grow a bit. It's tempting not to grow, maybe it's scary and kind of like those late summer evenings, covered in grumbly thunder.

Contusion

I didn't make an offering to the river, I tried to take from it. Now I have bruised ribs.

It was actually pretty funny. I had just dropped my son off at his grandparents' house, and I was trying to make the most of a beautiful day. So, I took my guitar into the forest and wandered until I found a beautiful fallen tree that had completely crossed the river. I passed by twice before realizing there was no obvious path, but after a small amount of hesitation I simply wandered directly through stinging nettle and perhaps poison ivy just to reach a clearing where I could climb on top of that beautiful log. That's just what I did, but I was in for a surprise. My guitar case got caught on a branch, and I toppled over to plummet into a very solid log below me. 

My guitar didn't get wet, and I saved everything. However, I smacked my side pretty good, and I was now quite stranded at that riverbend. I didn't know what else I could do, so I sat in the sun and dried off a bit while trying to catch my breath. My side was very painful, but I managed to laugh it off a bit. Suddenly I felt thankful for the day as well as the whole experience of being bested by a fallen tree. 

There was a lesson to be learned. Sometimes nature speaks loudly, and this experience has reminded me that we can't just take without giving back. Now I'm bruised and it's very uncomfortable to lay down, but I'm somehow very thankful this happened to me.

Do Shadows Have Memories?

My house was build almost 90 years ago. The original owners were a man named Sigmund Harris and his wife Evelyn. They probably had a few children too. Apparently the family was here from the time the house was built all the way until about twenty years ago when only Evelyn remained here. She was known to gather the fallen flowers from the magnificent magnolia tree in front of the house one by one and put them in buckets. I'm not certain, but the story goes that Sigmund planted that tree for her birthday, anniversary or perhaps Mother's Day. Today it's probably the biggest magnolia tree in our city.

The house was a rental for 17 year after that. I hear there were some interesting characters to pass through including a violently alcoholic couple that actually left damage on the fence during a drunken brawl. Like Sigmund and Evelyn, the many renters also came and when, and now my little family lives here. We have a little candle shop in the basement and I work from home as a traveling professor. Salem grew up here.

I could only wonder if the house remembers us by our shadows. What would they say about us?

Pluto, what's the name of the moon?