I hope you haven't abandoned me. The beating heart of a dusty impulse. The sun came after my waking. A cricket chirped from between the walls last night. Oblivious to the time of year like all true Californians are, it sang against it's own metronome. A quality we have in common. Like a pencil drawn maze, we retrace our lines over and over until we reach the end. I've been setting my feet onto the same footsteps in the sand for some time now. While time does his best to blow winds across these patterns and for that I'm grateful. It's these altered subtleties of the familiar that help keep my flame alive. This is an understatement of what can quickly become a hurricane. I'm leaving out the storm of conditions and beauties beyond my control. I'm forgetting the endlessly wrapped around infinities of imagination. I'm failing to include the unknown. Dreams both remembered, told, forgotten, and manifested. Then there are the people. The souls. The traces of memories. The hints of actualism. The foreshadowed futures, altered states, activities, meals, loves, and the affluent tide. I also should acknowledge the looming feeling that somewhere-out-there west is a roving magnetic point. Turning back and forth like a prison searchlight. Scanning and affecting the coast. Manipulating the insignificant moving dots as they decorate/desecrate the shores. When my friend and I swam away from the safe beach on that fringe day between summer and fall, we were moving toward this source. Existing beyond the patterns. Defying the same institutions that gave us purpose. There is cemented land, fixed ground, and then the shaky sand that signals the last bit of control we have before entering a larger mercy. It was for this wild element to which we were leaving our feet. There, strongly we swam across an ocean of light navy blue, fading into dark shades of black. Driven by the primal fight and flight mechanism. The same fear of the unknown that lent an urgency to our motions was also the invigorating quality that drove us out into the deep in the first place. Solitary beings encapsulated in a liquid vault. I became alone. I had lived this experience in variations all summer. The panic always had a new face. I swam and swam but the land never moved. And as much as the fear slid across my limbs, the calm was in knowing that the choice was mine. The faith was in avoiding the teeth. The spirit was in the freedom of letting go to the sum. The pride manifested as the strength of my singular. The laughter was in returning to shore. The gratitude in the existence. The growth happening sometime after returning to the sand, maybe later, maybe still.
Surrender fate to another's home, with only the strength of your ever-beating heart as your greatest variable. The rest is left to probabilities, chance, facts, the time of year and just how much you want to live.
