I suppose now is the best time to say this from the heart. Above anything else, I am a very real person. I have thoughts and ideas. I have dreams and desires. I have aches and pains, both emotionally, and sometimes physically. I have doubts, fears, worries and concerns. I have all the above that would come with living a normal, everyday crazy life. 
I am real. I have flesh and bone. I have the vital organs that keep me alive. I have a thought process that has been growing since birth. I learn as I go. I think and I feel. I find myself in both good times and bad.
I am like you.
In fact, I am exactly like you or anyone else in the world.

There is a street that runs up a hill not too far from my house. I like it up there. I like the way the street bends and winds around. I like how it moves through the upstate land and country homes. I like that I can breathe here. I’m out of the City. I’m away from the elements, so to speak. I’m out of the current climate and away from the political arguments and the detrimental rhetoric. I’m here on my own with my chest to the wind and the breeze through my hair, which I have decided to grow out again for just such an occasion.
I love these walks. I love each step I take because each step tells me that I’m moving closer to something. And I might not know what this means. I might not know where I am or where I’m going but at least I know that I’m not standing still.

I know why the youth are wild. I know that everything is all about time. Whether you’re young or old, it’s all about time. No matter how we slice this, we’re all on the clock in one way or another. The only difference is our priorities. The difference is our perspective.

See, as kids we used to look up at our parents. We’d look up at the adults in our circle of influence. We would see them work. We would hear them talk about life and bills, mortgages and insurance. As kids, we saw our parents work and argue. We saw them slave. We heard them yell at the television and argue with the news. We heard them complain about the price of gas. And when you’re a kid, you see this and swear to yourself, “I’ll never be that way.”

You know, there is a great big world out there.
There are a lot of people on this planet.
We have billions of them.
And me and you, well, I suppose it is suffice to say that we are a small portion of something so much bigger.
We are part of this huge project I call Project Earth. 

There was a great chapter in a book I read back when The Old Man was passing away. The book was something I picked up from The Old Man’s bedside at the hospital. He was reading this before his heart took a turn for the worst. I remember this book, which I’ve read again, a few times since. I remember him too, The Old Man, I mean. 
There is something so strange about understanding the end and the finality of life. I cannot quite explain this any other way than this: Death is so final. And yet, there was something more to this moment. I had “A time,” is all I can say. I had a time with my Father before he passed. I had a moment, in which we shared a few thoughts and ideas. 
Of course there was sadness. But there were victories here as well. We had the chance to say things we never said before. More importantly, I had the chance to hear something I had seldom heard before. 

It is hard to believe that it has been nearly a year since all of this madness began. I remember about a year ago, at this time. There was talk about a virus coming and people were getting sick. No one ever expected it to reach this proportion. No one ever dreamed that Covid would become what it became. Certainly, no one ever thought New York City would cancel the march of all marches and shut down the St. Patrick’s Parade. And this year too. It seems the luck of the Irish might not be as lucky this year.
In fact, I can remember sitting in a meeting about this. We thought we would all be fine. We never expected anything to be this way. Even when there were talks about shutting the City, the shutdown was only supposed to last for two weeks. 

Two weeks?

See this? This is my therapy.
These are my dreams and this is my way to close my eyes and see something other than, say, the homeless man dangling on Lexington with a dirty paper cup, asking for change at 5:30 in the morning.
This is my weight to balance the off-balance moments, like now, when the stress comes. I need to do this. I have to or else . . .
Or else I give in or worse, or else I explode in a sense and jump down the throats of the people I love the most. And put simply, they do not deserve it. No one does. So I defend them (and myself) by playing a game called visualization.

Life got off to a different start today, which means my usual position is out of sorts. This means I had to wing it today, which is not how I like to spend my morning. But either way, life is life and here we are on the great conveyor belt called Project Earth. Know what that means? It means either way, rain or shine, happy or not, we still have a race to run.

I admit it. I am a fan of nostalgia.
I love the old memories, which bring me back to old times
and better times.
I love it when I catch a whiff of something;
a smell from somewhere
or a whiff of something so simple as say,
a honeysuckle bush
and how this reminds me of a childhood memory.