The Dime-Store Shaman at 44

I turned 44 on the 26th of June. Man, one more trip around the sun, huh? 

Some days, I feel about nine years old, but more and more lately, I'm feeling about a thousand years old. Time. I forget who said it, but time is a beast you cannot reason with. 

It's not that I'm feeling any... heavy thoughts of mortality. Hell, we're all dying from the moment we're born, but we're all living too. 

Well. Some of us are. 

Things have been out of alignment for too long. Stars not lined up. Constellations out of whack. Streams flowing backwards. Haven't been too sure how to rectify that. It's easy to look at other things and know just the right tool to use or the right thing to say to fix it, from the outside looking in. It's a much more difficult thing to fix it from the inside. 

I recently read Brian Keene's Sundancer. He gave me a copy since I didn't have one, and told me I'd damn well better have one since the book was dedicated to me. I read it and felt a surge of sad nostalgia for... something. I don't know what. 

I'm still not sure I know. But there's, at times, an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia that leaves me feeling maudlin and empty. 

Been through a hell of a lot of job changes over the past year. Had to leave a place I really thought I'd found a home in, but hey, shit happens, right? Went to a place I knew was temporary but was sad to leave some of the people there. Arrived at a place that, as it happened, lined up when everything else fell through - some of those things against all favorable odds, which still leaves me scratching my head in confusion.

But sometimes, that's how things are. 

Haven't been writing much and I know that's a problem. Muse has been chatty in my head but she gets drowned with a lot of other things in there. Mind's been a cobweb filled attic lately and getting the whispers of stories she wants me to tell has been impossible, but not for lack of trying. I've got around 10,000 words down and know the words of the story (for the most part) that remains, but putting those words down in the right order... not so easy lately.

We'll see how this new year for me turns out. Much like my brother, Geoff Cooper, I don't really buy into the whole New Years Resolution attitude or trying to line things up after a birthday with "it's a new year" kind of thing. Much like him, I always thought it was rather pointless to do that. Each day is not a clean slate. You have the past but it's just that. We all have the future but not a single one of us know how long that is or if we'll have one. The only thing we can focus on - the only thing that makes sense - is the present. 

Best we can do is try to get those stars back in alignment and make sure those constellations shine as brightly as we can.

b

6-27-2015