After Us the Deluge – Who are They?

They lie soaking in the front lawn, backyard, strewn about the pasture.  Once alive and vibrant with hope and full of fanciful mystery, these formerly living must now be let go.  Commemorated.  Buried.  It would be easier if I could take responsibility for their demise.  Punish myself and be done with it.  But I am only responsible for their creation, nurturing and neglect.  I put each of them in harms ways by wanting them to accompany me through life.  Having a fascinating companion makes your time fly.  Being with someone who is always wanting to do things that scare the hell out of you makes the emotions soar.  Observing and absorbing stirring emotions so intense and so raw and so genuine reminds one that they are – sometimes reluctantly – alive.  Now I smell death in my creations.

Loss hollows me out – have no doubt.  My past lives swell before me.  But having something to lose at least puts me ahead of having nothing at all.  The false starts and missteps and naivete that infected the young me diminished, slowly, as hope became more strategic and sentiments cool with age.  The wise who watch over me never wanted to be discovered, but, also, never want to be abandoned.  For it is the lack of knowing everything that keeps me seeking to want some select things.  It is my believing without seeing that ultimately leads me to a place where every representation of those things I thought were important lie about me and wait to be disposed of.  Now I see death in my past lives.

Pursuing something to find a thing that matters is a way of escaping yourself.  It might start out as a person, next it may be an achievement, followed by occupation, family, and or isolation.  These pursuits only understand win lose in their immediacy but they are steps up and towards oneself.  The events of life hold value diametrically.  Winnings are quickly dissipated and leave little value for life.  Losing often has no immediate reward but pays a life long dividend.  The wise who I spoke of earlier are there to help but prefer to remain anonymous.   Now I hear wisdom in my silent past.

Once you know it all, you begin on the path to learning nothing.  When you conclude that those who trust you are suckers, you begin on the path to losing their trust.  If you believe everyone is out to get you, you begin on the path to getting nothing from anyone.  Each of us will eventually take the path of least resistance.  Unless we have the knowledge to know the pain of alternate paths, we will repeat our mistaken travels.  The Wise could give us this wisdom at birth but they choose for us to do it the hard way.  They could tell us that every ascent has a descent in its future and every descent has an ascent in its future – but they don’t.  They could tell us that every harvest – good or bad – begins in the dead season of winter when no activity is taking place.  The thoughts in this winter of events manifest in the spring planting of seeds of endeavor.  Those nurtured or neglected planting soon must endure the scintillating heat of summer with deluge and disease.  The surviving crop of this season of man matures and goes to harvest and then to the scales.  One must acknowledge that the cycle begins again with the winter.  Now I feel the dead season in my beckoning future.