Undermine

How is doubt so strong? Where once we trusted an oaken floor, now we eye each board with the thought of falling through.

Epoch

Lately it feels like the tale of a battle being heard again.
There are rumblings of drums over the hills.
Now and then comes the hiss of an arrow and someone nearby falls.
Others ride off under cover of night.
You stand with your back against the only one you trust and wait.

Winds of change

The signs are there to show a confrontation coming over the horizon.
In one respect it's simple since the history is there to not sell out, surrender or ask for a break.
I've never shrunk from the unknown, so the possibilities are actually objects of enthusiasm: TDL, Sysco, Summit...
And 2 little letters say that no matter what, I have a fallback position. AZ.
So many decisions get made every day by people who do not have enough understanding of the problem, nor any idea of the value of what they already hold. Every week I find myself trying to explain to someone chanelling General Custer that we have a warrior in need of training. He looks with blinkered vision, as someone looks at him, and so on down the line.
In other quarters, mediocrity gets praised and rewarded while outright incompetence and dishonesty are tolerated. If people only knew what goes on behind the annual report...

Ebb tide

More than 30 years after reading Tolstoy's opinion that people mistake excitement for happiness, I'm still not sure where I stand, because I've believed one side, then another. There's a line to be drawn in the stress/agitation/ excitement stimulus between adding fuel and burning out.
I warmly remember the Sunday afternoons rowing on the river when it was like glass. If I had to choose, I'd take that stormy night, rowing against a tide so strong it broke an oar, and I had to grab at pilings and tow the boat with the rope over my shoulder.

As the past few days have unfolded according to plan, I feel unfulfilled. While there are times requiring reflection, I'm in a phase requiring the unexpected. Ennui begets entropy.
Much as I love the roses, I'm drawn too by the thorns.

Hearts for Sale

Going into Horton's tonight, I was almost intercepted by a heavy-set young woman storming toward the garbage to dump her drink.
I heard the young man driving the pick-up truck calling after her: "sorry, sorry, sorry."
Whatever he may have done to cause the problem and call for an apology was not what caught my attention.
It was his tone and the look on her face.
She had the power to make him miserable and intended to use it.
He was young and trim-looking with a late-model pick-up and this girl had him at her mercies.
By and large, the only way people gain that ownership of any us is that we hand it over. We make a bargain of some kind, and so often in the context of what is supposed to be love, comes the struggle for power. What is supposed to be a partnership too often becomes a contest for dominance, and the balance of power may shift from one to the other, with a consequent need for futher punishment for past indignities. We lose sight of why we got into the soup in the first place. That great old tune "Paradise by the dashboard Light" sums it up in the last few verses. "I would love you till the end of time. And now I'm prayin' for the end of time, cause if I gotta spend another minute with you...."
What happens to us? Why are we so determined to punish each other for our own choice of surrender?
I give you the power to hurt me in the belief that you will not.
It's an odd bargain in which the greatest minds of all time have still lost their way.
And having given that power, why is it so hard to take it back? We suffer as much torment from leaving as we do by staying. Crimes of passion are born from the fact that the higher mind cannot reason with the primal one.
While the energy poured into that turmoil may burn us, we feed on it at the same time.
I hand you a single rose, and as you take it, silvery strands wrap round your fingers and the contest of hearts and minds begins.

The quality of mercy

At what point is someone not held accountable for their own actions?
People are troubled, disadvantaged, handicapped, misunderstood, stressed, pressured..and still succeed.
Someone else gets turned down for a date and takes out a blind rage on those around him. Modern wisdom is to offer him understanding.
Under this, there are no criminals, only lost souls.
Forgiveness is an individual choice which should not be mandated by society.
There are those I care for enough to forgive eternally.
I would not expect the court of our society to show the same leniency.

Every second of every movement

We like to believe that our lives have order and plan, but so very much is just random sparks.
Yesterday a friend I hadn't heard from in over 15 years called me up. Thinking it was telemarketing, I immediately hung up. Luckily he was with someone I know very well, who placed the call again, and we connected. I joked at the time, but might there have been others?
Likely, in one form or another at some time or other.
When I look back over the life-changing moments, I see how fragile were those threads. I could have chosen not to make that hospital visit almost 33 years ago. I would have gone to the tavern with my cousin and formed some other relationship.
Reading want ads, 30 years ago, I might have started at the top of the page, instead of the bottom. I would have a different job, a different house, I might not have children....I would not know any of the people who now form part of my daily life. A voice I hear every day that is music in my ears would belong to a stranger living in a different reality.
Things so simple, so tiny...It's not just the path not taken, it's a single blade of grass that makes the difference.