When you're over your self...Overture to your truth

"So you might as well keep dancing if you're not gonna run..."

I keep trying to write and something always seems to stop me. Either some mental block, or some happening in my life that forces me to exert the energy I'd rationed off for writing towards some less than worthy cause. Like heavy drinking and a hard recovery. Or working until 11 pm on a Friday night (what the WHAT!). Yeah, BAH is my new boo. Sexy, confident and always willing to keep me around to put in work. That's the kind of lover I appreciate and my employer has met those requirements fully.

I've been thinking about life a lot more lately. Not just the normal mental melee' of plans for the long-term and immediate future. More so on the nature of it all. Really, the thoughts on life ironically stem from thoughts on death.

My paternal grandfather passed away this past weekend at the age of 82. Who can be mad really? He lived such a full life, and was such a great person that it's hard for me to feel as sad physically as I do mentally. There will always be a gap in our family with his passing, but I think more than anything, he received his reward for a life well lived, a job well done.

So is death a payment or a reward? Furthermore, is life a payment or a reward?

I've always lived with the underlying belief that everything is always worth it. There's always some pay ment, or pay back for that which we're given and for that which we give in this life. Respectively.

This might be my faith speaking. The notion that whatever I may be going through today, whatever heartbreak or disappointment or fear or misunderstood rotations of the earth, are all to shape me into a better man for tomorrow so I can fulfill God's will. But, what if your time is cut short? Does that mean that it's all fulfilled. Or is it a tragic falling short of a promise? A branch cut before it's able to produce flower or fruit...

I've seen more death over the past few years than I'd like to. Each person, regardless of the proximity of their bloodline to mine, represented a hope lost, ripped from the collective hopes of the world, in my eyes. The tears have been for that more than anything. The world as a whole has lost something so precious as one other life.

So if this thing called life is so precious, so precious in fact that we celebrate it as much on its departure as we do on its arrival, then we should all be overwhelmingly thankful for each day the gift is renewed.

We should also all really stop driving cars. BP, and Chevron, and many other companies that financially benefit from the literal raping of the earth, need to be put out of business (or forced by way of the market, as expressed by consumers, to enter into delivering new energy products), and I don't see any other way to do it. We can all sit around and pretend as though some gradual and well thought out change will reverse the detriment we've brought upon the earth from whence we all are derived. However, while change takes time, I know that better can happen overnight. Some births are laborious, but some rebirths can be in the blinking of an eye. It's time for our humanity to be reborn in a way that maintains the connection and collective appreciation we all have for our mother, the earth. Gaia as the Ancient Greeks would know it, and Geb as the Ancient Egyptians would before them. That which God created first, along with heaven. That which we all come from, and shall one day return to...

For Rosalind Caldwell Jones, Courtney Donnell, Darnell Burns Jr., and now James Rutledge too. I should continue to strive to be better tomorrow than I was today, and much better than I was yesterday.

"And in the corners of my mind, I hope that I'll get to see you again, my friend. Just like a candle snuffed at dawn, you're here, you're near, you're there, and then you're gone"