Can't Wait For Anne To Get Back.

For a brief moment the tear in the curtain has become apparent to me and I can see past deluge of today, into the sound and steady depths of beyond tomorrow. The feeling is reminiscent to the bliss of last fall; there exists an unshakeable certainty that something excruciatingly wonderful is there just around the bend -- the perfection of a well made mistake -- the achievement that is sometimes failure. How wasteful I’ve been lately, to be so hung up on these petty misgivings that would like to lay claim to my life. What significance does a year long job have to a life? What significance does it have to that magic that’s just there, beyond the tear in the fabric? I’m sorry that she’ll never see it that way, that for her the answer will always be, “all of the significance that a life can have.” How lonely it must be. Time is on my side, and for her it’s too late.

Last year there were so many moonless winter nights that I’d traverse the treacherous country roads between Birmingham and Oberlin. Orion would stand sentinel as I marveled at the barren wastelands that are snow covered Ohio homesteads at two in the morning. I always loved those treks for their solitude, for the feeling that I was absolutely invincible. And most nights I was driving dad’s truck, so I’d make the cross-town hike home on foot when the rest of the world was asleep, after the truck had been safely returned. There was never a single soul stirring, and I would pretend that I was on the moon or in some post-apocalyptic Siberian outpost. There was never anything to be afraid of then, it was all just adventure. Night after night I would make my nod towards safety and the familiar as I plunged headlong into the unknown.

Would serve me well to take those lessons to heart.