On Birthdays

So I survived another year.

Twenty-seven.

Twenty-seven?

What an odd number.

That's seven numbers higher than I can safely count on my digits.

What am I supposed to use?

Dice?

An abacus?

Twenty-seven years.

That's a lot of days.

A huge number of hours.

A stupid amount of minutes.

I'm not even sure if the number of seconds can actually be that long but geez.

I'm still here.

Struggles with physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health...and I am still here.

Battered, graying hair, confused about where the bruise on my shin came from and wondering how life came to be so beautiful while I was busy being so worried, so lost in deep thought.

If you would have asked me ten years ago where I would be now it would have not have involved the word "Saraland" or the fact this place has become an unexpected second home involving a host of strange characters of whom I am not entirely sure of which are real and which are merely figments of my far too over active imagination.

Of course I tease.

I am fully aware of who is and who is not a highly interactive hallucination; it's just infinitely more fun to put on a show for the crowd.

And so time passes on just as it has for as long as it has and will continue to do so until matter itself finds a good stopping point.

Beauty, horror, love, hate, rain, sunshine, perfection, sin, creativity, dullness and the record player will keep playing music for as long as God finds a need to keep this utterly bizarre human condition going.

All I can do is observe from my front row seats as time flows by second by second and I wonder at what will happen next.

Life is a bit like the weather in Alabama; if you don't like it wait about five minutes and it will change. Conversely, you can always cross the road to get out of the rain; unless of course you are like me and feel alive when the rain is falling from the heavens, droplets pressing against your skin and  setting your soul on fire with the whispers of God's promises of Love and Grace.

"Time" - Pink Floyd

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.

And so the night goes on...

In ways it feels like I missed my birthday.
Certainly sleeping fifteen hours on that day doesn't help.
I was running a fever yet  again.

I am still occasionally having a fever but thankfully my throat is cleared out and I can more or less breath and talk without excruciating pain.

Instead I'm staring at a white screen and typing in symbols instead of staring at the ceiling.

I'm listening to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" for the third time today.

That album has really grown on me.

Time is passing by.

I feel such a need to withdraw.

And at the same time this need to engage.

Two warring factions within myself.

Back and forth, back and forth.