The Strivings of a Loner and How I Got Here or My Gospel of Granite

How do I become more than I am? This strange emptiness fills me. Pushing against a block of granite is all I have ever known. It has never been I and I. Those two have been accompanied by the ever present NO, BE AFRAID, YOU CAN’T, YOU SHOULD BE SO ASHAMED OF YOURSELF. WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? STOP SHOWING OFF. My pain and I. I am alone.

You can never have a dream, let alone pursue it. And if you actually go after it, you can never live in the love of doing the thing that fills you with happiness, day in and day out. You are not worthy as a human being to ever have what you want. I am fear. I was fear. Who am I? My pain and I.

Now when I wake up, the block of granite is gone. In the name of my mother. She is gone. I have finally vanquished the demon. I put all my passion and obsession into freeing myself, so that I can now put all my passion and obsession into my dream. This strange emptiness fills me. Where is the terror? Who am I? Who am I? The thing I have wanted my entire life I have achieved, and yet I don’t yet trust that she is gone for good. Can I actually embrace the rest of my life with no albatross, no chain around my neck? Can I go after my dream with all the rage and passion and love and obsession in me? Can I give it my all every day?

My unconscious and I, without the demon. What a strange thing. Sometimes I feel like a little boy, sometimes I feel my baby place, sometimes a young man, but never do I feel like a man. I feel, I feel, I feel, but I have no sense of myself in real time. I have relived those old haunts, those memories, so many times in a regressed state, I often walk along in a fugue state, and life feels new. I am reborn. I am renewed. I am living my second life. Not after retiring from an incredible career as an athlete, but after an incredible career of fighting my very own personal demon. Who could have ever known? How did I vanquish the demon? Wow. My pain and I.

I must become more than I am. That has never been enough, will never be enough. The I am that I know was tormented and tortured by a demon. The I am now I don’t know. Who am I? This strange emptiness fills me. Go run now, run into the dream, run into the beauty of life, run into ecstasy and bliss, run into a future created from love, not fear.

I am, I love. I guess. This strange emptiness fills me. And so I run. My pain and I.

The road stretches way off into the distance, curving, inviting, teasing me with the promise of my salvation, if I can just get there. I see no one, no end, no one riding shotgun, no one on point.

I have been on it forever, it seems, slogging through freezing mud and slush, jumping through puddles, gliding through fog almost thick enough to caress, hopscotching my way between cracks, dancing chasses across smooth patches of tar, leaping over faded yellow highway lines, back and forth, back and forth, falling on the macadam as misty rain obscures my dubious vision, sprinting through pounding sleet over oil slicked flagstones as if I can outrun myself,

squinting through the haze of dust raised by my neverending obsession of laying one foot after another, striding down cobblestones, the sound of my boots echoing in my ears as my only companion, staggering through the simmering heat waves relentlessly pouring out if the scarred tarmac, skipping through the tunnels created by ancient trees and playing with the eternally shifting shadows caused by their branches ceaselessly swaying in the wind, wandering down the deep ruts created by countless vehicles, cha cha ing around potholes, peering through the lazy, late afternoon sun shimmering above the pavement as it renders the distance nebulous, pounded by stinging hail, face to the wind, sitting in the middle of the crossroad,

loping down rolling slopes, standing in the silence as drifting leaves cover the tiled roadway, sliding over silky, soft carpets of moldy, dead leaves, moving through the magical stillness as the dying sunlight glances off the stonework, crawling on gravel, reaching for the top of the next steep hill, feeling each minute cut, howling to the moon on the empty highway cloaked in a silver cape, staring to the heavens as the rain turns to snow, wet footprints stark against the dark asphalt,

screaming into the black starless night on the cold, black, frosted paving stones, ploughing through snowdrifts hiding the frozen cement roadwork, skidding on the raw brick, overlaid with ice, feeling the numb, frigid pathway under my numb, frigid feet, and pushing, forcing, battling through the furor and the tempest, blinding snow attacking me and annihilating any sense of direction of the only path I have ever known.

Pavement, tar, cement, cobblestones, flagstones, brick, gravel, tile, layers of macadam, rutted earth, and stonework, engulf my memories, a history written on mother earth herself, a connection always tenuous.

Always moving forward, always looking back, always on my own, I’ve been gone so very long, maybe I won’t even recognize home. Maybe it is only a myth, a fantasy sold through the ages by mystics and storytellers. Maybe calmness, peace, and bliss are as fleeting as life itself. Maybe that’s okay.

Just keep moving, moving, moving forward. Exhausted, worn out, a tired traveller listening to the wicked, wicked wind whistling wildly without wisdom, the occasional ally on the forever road of hope. I can lay my head down at last, nothing left, candle extinguished each night, knowing everything is left on the road. I am more than I am.

I love. This strange emptiness fills me. My pain and I. I am not alone.

I love.