Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, into the future

I turned sixty last month. A lot of things are never going to get done. Nothing in particular, just a lot of them. Everything else being equal, there’s just not enough time. Even if money wasn’t an issue, there’s still not enough time. There’s too many places to see, trails to hike, stories to tell, roads to ride, mistakes to correct, too many books to read.
And there’s something wrong with part of my brain. It thinks I’m thirty, or that’s not it exactly, but it definitely thinks I should be, or it forgets sometimes that I’m not. It gets reminded pretty fast when I stand up and, just like my old man, it takes me seven eight steps to straighten my back. Do you remember that song; Peter, Paul and Mary might have done it?

“Work your fingers to the bone and what do you get?
Boney fingers. Boney fingers.”

That was my old man. It’s beginning to look like it’s going to be me. Sometimes I can feel my fingers trying to twist over one another. I have to grab them and force them back. Who’d a thought?
It seems life is about getting sidetracked. Best laid plans, as they say. It ain’t till your looking back you can see where you’ve been going and you thank whoever there is to thank if you’re in a half way decent place because there’s no going back to change things and how ever far you are when you look back there’s always more coming. And things don’t ever stop, at least not when your eyes are open, usually not even then.
So what choice is there? I’ll keep living the life I got, breathe in breathe out, keep stepping out having faith there’ll be something to catch my foot when it comes down.

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