This is the first day of my life
I swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain suddenly everything changed
They’re spreading blankets on the beach
I spend a lot of my time reading, and writing. None of the writing gets published here, the number of posts in draft is twice that I have posed over the past two years. Maintaining a weblog for over a decade, I just don’t feel the need. Or reason. This isn’t a swansong post, by any means, the first paragraph has just started that way.
I spend a lot of time reading. Mostly these days I read history, but usually nothing beyond the fall of Byzantium. And the more I read, the more it all falls in to place, history, people, place, time and disaster. There are several inferences in here, aimed even at some who don’t know I write here, some who don’t know me, some who do, some who lived before and some who will live after.
Yours is the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
Now I don’t know where I am
I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go
History on its own is nothing, everything is context. And everything is a hero with a thousand faces. Do we believe it all, when everything is twisted around the same story core? From early times, to now, everything is the same. Can you see it? Campbell could, but was only taking mythology and theology. I think it is more than that, it is also life and history. Why is this woven in? I don’t know, my search continues, and those I journey with as well, if some know it more than others.
I haven’t been wrong about those I take on the trip, except I think recently the criteria relaxed, which folds into the thousand faces in and of itself, if you are awake to recognise it.
And so I thought I’d let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow
But I realize that I need you
And I wondered if I could come home
All of history pivots, and usually on stupidity or chance. Yes, no one remembers the names of those who built the pyramids, just those who ordered them to be built, and this is how it should be. But it breaks the heart. The white man does not have the monopoly on cruelty, but I still burn with a shame. And an anger.
The Crusades and the Trail of Tears are, to me, the two most indicative times. Everything before is echoed in it, and everything after will be. Not that these are a template, or indeed the worst, for others have suffered more, or different. There is no hierarchy of victims, just victims.
Pivotal points, where the wrong person gave the wrong answer, the right person didn’t reach the juncture in time to swing it all, the world just turned at the wrong angle, and everything changes.
Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange you said everything changed
You felt as if you’d just woke up
And you said “this is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you
But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
And I’d probably be happy
Times change, that is all the ever do. Eras end, that is all they ever do. Who you take with you is the important part. Something went wrong, and I read the colours not quite correctly. This was a first, and I am still thinking about it, as if I was right, then another course leads to its own conclusions.
Even this post has been stripped, left like this, speaking only in tongues to some, and the gaps between unbridgeable. History doesn’t repeat itself, the mask of a thousand faces does.
So if you want to be with me
With these things there’s no telling
We just have to wait and see
But I’d rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery
Besides maybe this time is different
I mean I really think you like me
