The Tides

14 Years ago today your Mother married Me.

A lot can happen in 14 years. A lot can happen in 1 year. A lot can happen in 1 day. To be quite honest, a lot can happen in 3 minutes.

That was how long it took for 12 years to become a footnote. You know what the last two have entailed.

This Human Condition is a fascinating and frightening thing. We were never given any cliff notes. Our ships were built with hands of love or often hands of necessity, and we were set adrift on the fluid surface of this thing we call our Time. It's kind of a like a plastic bottle floating on the ocean. Refuse, if you will. Something that seems inconsequential and yet ultimately defines exactly who you are, while you're busy being it. Only you don't control the surface beneath you. You just hover above it. Carried at the whim of the wind and the tides.

I would like to tell you that life is driven as such. I would like to give you that way out. I cannot, though. Not in good conscience. That is just a description of my tides. That is my excuse. That is what I still, to this day, blame on the waves.

The ugly truth, the honest one, the only real one, proves that cliff notes were never needed. None of us ever required a directory of what to do or what not to do, what to say or what not to say, what to fight for or what to let go of. The ugly truth is actually the most beautiful thing of all. It is Itself.

I write these words because I'm still learning... too. I write these entries because I'm documenting my own discoveries. I only do so in the hopes that perhaps, one day, they may benefit you as they do me Now.

The only thing I really know, and I mean absolutely know for a fact, is that as long as you're floating... it doesn't really matter what destination you have in mind. Odds are good that destination never had you in mind either. Maybe you were never meant to find it and maybe it was never meant to find you.

Maybe nothing is "meant" at all.

What if floating is all we can ever do? Would that upset you?

I agree.

I say to hell with the tides.

Vagabond

vag·a·bond  (vg-bnd)

n.

1. A person without a permanent home who moves from place to place.

2. A vagrant; a tramp.

3. A wanderer; a rover.

 

I took that name a long time ago. I guess I just liked the sound of it. I added "King" on the end because it just seemed fitting. We all are, as it were, Monarchs of our own destiny. As it turned out I was far better at the former than I was the latter. I had no subjects. We all want subjects... right?

I wish I could give you all the answers. I wish I could scribble out all of the dodges and ducks that you'll need to learn to make your way on this journey. The ugly truth is that I don't honestly think anyone knows them. I don't think there's any way to prepare for them. I think life itself is a wanderer, a vagrant & and a tramp and I think the only way to greet it is with two fists and a thick skin.

We're a beautiful species, we really are. We have the mental capacity to know injustice, to comprehend it, and yet we're also so very adept at ignoring it. Higher learning. We want to progress and yet we only want to do so at another's expense. We bought into the ideas of freedom and hope, faith and trust, but when it comes down to fighting for it... we would sell our own souls down the river to not have to live up to those words.

 

We will never be an advanced civilization until we no longer require money to define our place in life.

That's why I'm a vagabond king. Not because I know something you don't, but because I know something you do.

 

Oh, and my Kingdom is unending.

 

 

Ripples

I like mirrors. Not because of what they show me but because of what they are.

There was a pond down in the valley behind the house I grew up in. You had to walk through a bunch of locust trees and then you had to wind your way through a pine thicket that was far older than I ever imagined I'd be. Eventually you found yourself at a fence. Mr. Walker owned that fence and the field beyond it. He had quite a few dogs. He had Popper, to be precise. The other dogs were irrelevant to be quite honest.

Popper was a Dalmatian that hated everyone and everything that wasn't him. I'm convinced of this.

If you happened to find yourself lucky, Popper was somewhere on the other south forty. He was few and far between and hopefully well beyond the time it would take you to skirt that fence and run like hell across the alfalfa field. I ran that gauntlet like a Champion more times than I care to count.

Once in the clear, you had to sneak past the turkey coup. No, I have no idea why Mr. Walker had turkeys. They're loud and they alarm themselves so easily. (Yes... intentional)

Regardless, if you were sufficient enough to have overcome such obstacles, you would find yourself at the little stagnant pond that piqued the mere imagination of one little boy who happened to grow up to be your Father.

Now let me tell you about that pond.

It held no beauty other than what it demanded you see in it. It was no bigger than the first trailer I lived in when I first arrived in Georgia... and it was just as ugly, might I add.

But its water was as placid as any I'd ever seen.

Once you'd skirted away the wee bit of pond scum that might float by and once you'd settled yourself over top of that mirror... it gave you exactly what you had come to get. I'm 36 years old and nothing to this day has reflected me better than that little pool of stagnant water on Mr. Walker's property.

I used to drop stones into it, you know. I liked how the ripples would distort my reflection for a bit.

I never really gave a shit where they were washing ashore. The ripples, I mean. I never really cared if they carried a bit of my image or not.

It's funny to think about now. You know, realizing that your own reflection never defined you at all. It was always the ripples. They were what mattered. They ferried you across the pond, as it were. They impacted what you couldn't see. They had no choice.

Yea.

Maybe Patience

This is why I love the Fall and what it means. When I was 8 years old my Father took me fishing for the first time. We went a ways up North Creek. I'd seen it before. It wasn't too far away from the hunting cabin that I'd haunted on occasion. Triple Oak Lodge. It was a little log cabin that had to have been close to 100 years old. In truth, it was 123. I digress.

Jennings creek was far more accessible but North Creek had the Big Fish, or so I was told. As such, that is where we went.

I remember my Father rigging my line with some odd contraption that involved a hook and some small egg things from a glass jar. They were bright orange. That much I recall.

He told me to cast upstream and wait for it to drift by. He said I would hook a lunker. I wasn't exactly sure what a "lunker" was but it sounded cool as shit.

I didn't hook said "lunker". But I did see that little orange ball swim by, often.

Still, I kept casting upstream because my Daddy (your Poppy) said that's what I should do. And if anyone knew what in the hell I was doing, it was my Father. Because I surely didn't.

At some point, and I can't recall the exact moment, I grew weary of the instruction. I began tossing the line out here and there. Willy Nilly (as I was later told). On one particular cast my little orange ball stopped floating by. It decided to hover around a rather obtuse rock. It kind of dangled, to be honest. Dangling in the current. It was a bit perplexing to an 8 year old.

But then I saw that maple leaf.

While I was worming around with my pole and furrowing my eyebrows, I caught a glimpse of a leaf that had finally let go. It was to my right, that much I recall. It wallowed in the breeze for a bit and then found it's new home on top of the water.

The stream, brook, or river, description completely dependent upon your interactions with running water... gladly accepted this leaf. Personally, I don't think it really cared. Secretly, I think it mattered above all things. I fight with myself about that memory often. Who was smarter? The leaf or the water? Immortal questions.

What I do know, though, is that the leaf in question nestled into the current and found its ride. I know that because I saw it do so. I was 8. But I saw it do so.

It followed the current until an obstacle arose (it's called a rock). It hit that obstacle. It stayed there. Far too long for an 8 year old's attention span, in my humble opinion, but it stayed.

Eventually, it let go. Eventually, it moved on. Eventually.

Now, common sense and logic would tell you that friction, pressure & resistance are what held that leaf there. That is probably true.

But to an 8 year old... maybe it was just Patience. That mystical entity I lacked. Maybe.

My little orange ball of bait didn't have that patience. To my knowledge it's probably still stuck. Shimmying in the current.

At least I hope it is.

Maybe I should go check. I've probably been patient enough. :)

(By the way... that isn't a stock photo. That's actually North Creek. Want to see it for yourselves? I'm game.)