Meaning or Being
The geezer has sat silent on the shelf for too long now. He apologizes. The older he gets the slower he goes. The older he gets the more difficulty he has making perfect sense. He apologizes, but he feels impelled to keep at it. This is after all a chronicle of aging. The effects of aging need to be shown. Not all of them are pretty, but what the Hell. We still can laugh.
The time has come for looking back, another thing that happens to us old farts. You carve on the walls of your mind the way you’ve come, the locations, the emotions, the joys and the adventures, the sorrows and the tears. You remember things you forgot decades ago. You remember times you stood at a crossroads and flipped a coin, when you made decisions without a thought. None of those decisions killed you. You’re still after all these years alive.
You trusted the animal. You trusted the wild thing loose on the lip of the jungle, the one who hungers to kill and eat and mate and to live forever. You never thought how it might play down the road. You were young. You trusted the animal.
Is this what it means, this parade of memories? Is it about turning loose, here in your old age, the beast of you? You’re too old and weary now to do much harm. You can let your pure spirit be your meaning. You can acknowledge its beauty.
There in your path then it stands. Its eyes blaze, it’s fangs drip, its muscles twitch, its tail wags for the joy of being loose, wags for the joy of purely existing. The meaning is that you lived and you still live. You have formed from your acts and your dreams and your memories a habitation for your wild soul. You have made an instrument for your soul to express itself with. Play then. Make music. Make a joyful noise. Make a sad one. As long as it’s alive, as long as there’s beauty to it, play on.
So there it is, your erratic past calling you back there into the murk. Maybe, if you shut up and let it play you’ll figure it out. Maybe you won’t. Does it matter?
Some of this may look to be coming out of left field. The geezer doesn’t guarantee that he’ll always make sense. But if you have the appetite for it, let it play out. Let your mind take you where it will. Follow your dreams and your memories. Maybe you’ll find some action, maybe some adventure. If nothing else, it could jazz up your old age.
With this post we started a thread. It’s an invitation. If you’re on your own memory trip and you’d like some companionship and some other points of view, here we are. Maybe we can help one another find the way.