Paint

The day I left home, the room I grew up within had walls painted white.

That was due to my having sullied them in my teenage endeavors.

When your old Man was a young Man, he made everyone who came into his room write something, anything, on his wall with permanent marker. The wall meant something. It was 1992... before facebook.

You see, everyone that I ever loved or cared about picked up the stick and wrote what they felt. They wrote what they wanted to say. Unabashed, unaltered, unending. They wrote what they desperately wanted the world to know they had to say.

It was beautiful.

When I left home I had to paint over it. I had to make it presentable again. It took 3 buckets of white paint.

But you know what?

Their words are still there. Buried beneath my whitewash. Hiding beneath the roller and hours and cussing. All of their words are still there. Their sentiments are still strong. Yes, they're buried beneath a couple of coats... but that doesn't render their message obsolete. That doesn't strip them of their intent.

It just means that sometimes you have to dig a little bit to understand what a room is trying to Say.

Life is a Room.

Don't paint over what it's trying to tell you.

Oh... by the way... The greatest quote someone once wrote on that wall was simple, crude, but incredibly to the point.

"You better live life wide ass open. If you don't... you'll end up living life wide ass open."

Paint can't cover up that truth.

One Night

The clouds are lazy tonight. I like that.

Cicadas are out in full force. They're finding their cadence, learning their rhythm, earning the percussion they've so mastered, and yet, they don't even care what I'm thinking.

It's quiet out here on the porch. I can feel the warmth from my body dissolving into the cool concrete. I kind of like that.

I keep thinking that it isn't so hard to see in the dark... if you just quit looking for the light. It's true.

The air smells good. The rain moved in, lingered, and moved on. It left its mark, though. It's still hanging around, waiting on the leaves, on the grass, in the soil. It's waiting to change.

The moon rose late. It's fat, lethargic and ambivalent. Still, it's pushing the shadows of the few tall oaks farther across the field than they could ever fall. Think about that for a season or two.

This is just one night in your life... I know that.

But it's one night in your life when I know that you sleep soundly, secure, and peaceful... just twenty steps away.

That's why I breath in and out everyday, just so you know.

Because one night in your life is every night in mine.