And you go and you try and you fight and you grind.
And you wake up. You eat. You work and you come home.
And we hope and we wish and we dream and we pray.
This is life.
God, grant me the serenity . . .

This is the life for all of us and yes, I agree that we are all growing and moving in different directions. We all have different backgrounds and histories and cultures that make us unlike anyone else.
We are all perfetly unique, which us a great thing to be.
But in the case of life; everyone has a path and a plan and a light and a way.
Everyone will experience heartaches and heartbreaks and death too.
Yes, because death is part of life.

Do you want to know what’s hard?
I have not seen my Father since the hour of his death in the month of December back in the year of 1989.
And yes, I understand that dying is part of living. I know this all too well.
But I was just a kid at the time.
I had yet to live or live enough to understand the terms of life or manhood or what it really means to be a man.
And who would show me now?

I had to pick this up as I went along. I was only a boy at the time. I had more scars than most adults and the above average of my scars were deep but equally invisible.
I was young and 17 with too many things to confuse me.

Labor Day Weekend –

The waves were quiet yesterday. The wind was nice and the sun was strong. Somehow, it seemed as though the beach at Point Lookout knew that the summer was officially over. Not that the beach has any sentiment or emotional attachment to the seasons. And it’s not like the beach cares whether we come or go.
No, I believe this is something for people who are of the flesh to be concerned with. Yet, I somehow feel a certain attachment to this place, the waves, the sands, the sunshine and the way sunlight glistens along the surface of the ocean.
I love this

I go back to that thought which my Mother tried to encourage that life is life and there is only one chance to make this life what we want it to be.
Mom used to try and push me with an attempt to make me think differently but of course, I was younger then.
I know.
I was older in different ways too, of course, and now that I am younger in many ways, more than ever, I realize that perhaps I was too young to see things the way I do now.
Hence, this is why they say maturity comes with time
And the same goes with awareness too.

I go back to a song from my youth and to a dance with my Mother, years ago, and to a song from Paul Anka simply known as “times of your life.”

And no one thinks.
No one flinches until they wake up one day and find how their impossibilities became possible.
Of course.

No one believes this happens to someone like them. “Not me!” and yet, we find that our impossibilities and became all too real.
I admit it –
The city has changed over the years.
The landscapes are not the same and the people are different as well. And still, I have the same old memories and the remnants of proof, such as the leaning junkies falling slightly and dangling near the clinic by 35th street. 

So much has changed.
But not the game.

I am north from where I would rather be and south of the sun, south of the clouds, and I am south of the moon, which was hidden last night, due to the clouds.
Something is coming my way.
I don’t know what this means or what it is, but I can feel this in my bones and down to my care.
Something is coming and so, I have to prepare myself.
Prepare.
Yes, prepare.

And when I say prepare, I do not mean this as if some kind of impending doom is on the way and nor do I say this in the fits of some kind of paranoid fear.
No.

No one ever told this was going to be easy.
Remember that.
No one ever said that all smiles are friendly and at the same time, not all threats are real or true.
Remember that one too.

I have been told that everything happens for a reason.
I have been told, “you’re in the right place, kid!”
I’ve been told, “Don’t quit before the miracle happens.”
And I have argued all the above.

I find myself looking for something that isn’t there.
Has this ever happened to you?

You know there’s something missing.
You know what it is and yet, you can’t give it a name or put your finger on it or say what it is.
You just know . . .
Something is missing.
Something’s just not there.

I am sending this to you in parts to open myself and share the process of what comes next. And so, here I am

Send me, I say….
What else do I have left to lose?

Part 1:

The waves are folding close to the shore this morning. The sun is mostly hidden by a drape of gray clouds with open patches that allow the sun to break through.
I can feel the warmth when the drapes peel back. But that’s fine.
I guess today is not a beach day for most.
I can dig it . . .
The beach is not vacant by any means. No, not at all.
However, I assume the usual clientele are elsewhere and doing something else, which, of course, brings no consequence to me.
No.
I much prefer this moment as it is.
The beach is my sanctuary and so, this is perfect. 

Charles Bukowski once wrote:
Find what you love and let it kill you.

I am still not sure how I see this or what this means to me. Then again, I am unsure if I want this or anything to kill me again.
Yes, I say again.
I say I don’t want anything to kill me again because we often die in pieces. Or more than anything else; we often die alive i more cases than we think and even more; we frequently mourn the loss of our own deaths more than we experience death in a literal sense.
I know this firsthand.
Then again, and getting back to what Bukowski said:
Find what you love and let it kill you.

True love is selfless. And, so, if love is selfless than me and my life needs to be dedicated to this.
Therefore, I need to be dedicated to my love, my spirit, and my hopes and I need to dedicate my dreams for a better lifetime in both this one and the next.