For me, forever ago

I couldn't find myself for weeks, maybe more. Never found that moment when I could check in with myself and see how things were going. I used to have that with tobacco, be able to step outside under the night sky and take a moment to reflect on the day and my play in it. Or at least that's the power I gave cigarettes and then took away. It's been three months since today...

This speed is dangerous, this speed is necessary. As I get older time moves faster and it seems I'm just as reckless as ever, perhaps only with a thicker skin now. Less apt to give a fuck if someone doesn't like who I am. I've always looked forward to that feeling. That and the patience and thoughtfulness of old-age.

This morning the sky was overwhelming. There was this thin line of cirrus clouds in wisps and billows spanning up from the desert southwest and us walking in ones and twos out by the San Joaquin delta. The richest shades of green bending in the breeze and an enormous herd of goats wandering up a hillside to the east. In front of us the river slow and steady on its way to the bay. Rails and pheasants hiding in the thickest thatches of grandelia and pickleweed, calling out sharp and clear in the morning air. I was zero and became less as the day passed.

I was thinking about the book I'm reading and how I might not make it through. Don't you hate it when in the end authors lose the feeling and tone of their entire book? It's as if they took six months off and came back without a clue. You can feel their unease and haste as they rush the final sentences, draw their characters into unlikely endings, trying to wrap it up and get that rag to the printer. It wasn't that good of a book anyway, but to lose himself like that... bummer. And it reminded me of me and how hard it is to hold that feeling there, the one you love, close to you. To see it through and make good of what you started. That's the hardest part.