Indulge me if you would...and take a moment to listen...
I heard this song this morning...it popped out of my mp3 player on the way to work...I didn't even know I had it. A message perhaps. Not the strangest thing that's happened to me over the years (and miles). Not by a long shot.
I was instantly overwhelmed by intense feelings. A person lost to me and all the feelings we'd experienced together leapt to mind. It's been a year now since that story...the untold tales...and the unlived chapters closed...unexpectedly and rather harshly.
It shouldn't have been so hard...that year ago. My part in her story was over long ago...a decade? Two? I was not a part of her story way before her final page was written.
That final page...A year ago.
Really? A year? Perhaps that triggered the strongest feelings of all. Just where do all the days go? How do I not notice? What opportunities have shot by unnoticed as well?
I had to look in my journal to be sure...and that made me feel guilty. Once...I would have known the exact second...but there's been so many over the years. So many seconds. So many memories. So many lost possibilities. The strength of the memories matters little, when there are so many of this intensity.
Passion as a principle has its cost.
Yes, it had been a year. More actually. That meant it was time to ride.
I left work...pushing hard into the heat. A hundred mile ride just to brush my fingers on the rough stone. The monument was cool depite the blistering heat of the day, but to my surprise there was nothing here for me.
That confused me even more. Surely there would be something special in this place?
Turns out there was only the dead.
It took a moment to realize...no...there was nothing special here because that essence...that presense I expected...as with many more that have touched my life...was with me all the time.
Never far away...Passion as principle has its benefits too.
The journal:
Friday, February 01, 2008
A restless night.
Tomorrow is a day of steel and fire and blood and earth.
Welding in the morning...the 65mph winds we had over several days this week took down part of one of the barns at the family farm...snapped steel supports. I'll be jacking it back into position and welding it together in the morning.
The afternoon...yeah. The afternoon. If it was a movie it'd be raining.
Instead it'll be a glorious day. I'll be riding to yet another funeral.
Another part of my past has left me alone to try and understand what it was we had...wondering if it ever mattered...and what it might have become had we given it more of a chance.
I'm supposed to speak.
Just what do I say?
"We were lovers once...and we touched the sky."
Yeah. That was long ago...and our lives had gone different directions.
"We were lovers once...and we touched the sky."
That would not go over well...
Can't sleep tonight. The part of me that understands fire and steel howls. The darkside smells the blood and claws its way out. The rational man doesn't wish to contain it. He wishes...he has always wished...to see it run free...and he has never dared...
The warden said, "the hell with it" and has opened the gate. "Quiet desperation" be dammed.
Passion boils. Mortality looms. Experience cries for sating its ravenous hunger.
Lust. Pure and powerful. Raw and primal, yet surprisingly complicated. Its focus scattered. Its targets unclear. Its drive absolutely relentless.
And this night...I am alone. Even the magical touch of a woman denied me.
Damn the male brain anyway.
The Dragon gleams in the garage...and I think it may be time to ride...to scream into the night and see how much we can take...push ourselves beyond the edge of endurance...substituting one kind of pain for another.
Tomorrow is for steel and fire and blood and earth.
Tonight may be as well.
I'll see you on the road.(end journal entry)
Steel and earth and fire and blood.
Never far away...Yeah...
I'll see you on the road.
