When The Wind Talks Back
This highway, she's hotter than nine shades of hell
And rides are as scarce as the rain
When you're down to your last shuck with nothin' to sell
And too far away from the train
It's been a good month of Sundays
I had a tall drink of yesterday's wine
Left a lot of good friends, some sheets in the wind
and satisfied women behind
Ride me down easy, Lord - Ride me on down
Leave word in the dust where I lay
Say I'm easy come, easy go and easy to love when I stay
-Waylon Jennings
There are some nights, moments after the last speck of dusk light has flickered out beyond the soft horizon, that we can see a long ways.
This is one of those very nights.
We go through phases and stages in this life. Sometimes we repeat, and sometimes we re-learn but we always, always, always ALWAYS fuck things up. One can spend a life trying the right the muddy trail of wrongs that skews out behind us, in the crusty tapestry of our path - but there is no cleaning that can take that away. No sweeping. No purging. What we've done has been done - and it will always be done. Nothing can be undone.
I think I'm realizing that I can be a difficult person to love.
I have regrets. I wish I'd done certain things differently, and I wish, at times, that I could have opened my thinking to beyond my own sub-galactic, tiny sphere of existence. Sometimes, the city heart in me would polarize everything around me and pedestalize my efforts, including those who loved and wanted the best for me.
And there are even some nights where the soft, warm tears will show up - life a shiver up your spine that you just can't shake. But it's always in those moist-lens moments that I feel the most thankful. It is in that frightful but epiphanal span that I feel the most awake - and the most alive. For as the teary regrets drizzle, I am often overwhelmed with a wide-eyed, soul-stinging gratitude.
I have been more than blessed to live the life that I've lived, and to have accrued the dog-eared, voluminous books of experience on the shelves of my heart.
But those shelves have room. There is still writing left to do. In fact, there always is, isn't there?
Lately, I've been visiting a farm from time to time with some small-town country pals. With the spring coming, just the deep-pink sunset view alone is worth the cost of the trip. The farm simplifies things, and the people I go with make me believe that there is something worth digging for in the mines of this life. The somber act of watching a horse and a donkey eat hay is so simplistic - and yet, it is enchanting. When you really let the truth sink in, and grasp that there really is life behind EVERY layer of what we see, you find it.
Joy.
I remain the rappin' cowboy, and my meandering stereo switches between Waylon, the Beasties, Cash, Tribe and many more. I saunter on. Ten gallon hat tilted. Beats pumpin'.
Maybe I'll see ya. Maybe I won't. Whatever happens, keep being you.
