So - Writing....

Day 1 (or 2) but who's counting?

Hurray for this 30 day challenge which is off to its blazing and much celebrated start; on day 2(!) I might add. Due to a longer than planned, albeit great New Years Eve / Day in Savannah I am now here and present, prepared to pour out any and all which may find itself in need of being written of; described in depth and story shared. That said let us see what awaits here at the start of a new year. Begun with renewed hopes; (re)commitments and several pounds to go, the first step is thus taken. Or stumbled. In my case, at times, face-planted in an attempt to march boldly into my new year with all things being recreated in the fresh light of hopes and dreams. Then I get up and shake off the short lived euphoria of some magical, appointed moment based on an antiquated Roman calendar system and I see that life is waiting right where I had left it. Back there at the curb, with the engine running. The driver, Reality, says to me "Ok, you've had your moment, can we now move it along?" 

The reality I awake to is best described with a quote from Death Cab For Cutie (The New Year):

                    So this is the new year

                    And I don't feel any different

                    The clanking of crystal

                    Explosions off in the distance

                    

                    So this is the new year

                    And I have no resolutions

                    For self assigned penance

                    For problems with easy solutions

Life moves on in the direction it wills. 

Truth be told, reader, this is as much (if not more) an ambition for me as it may be for you. I've committed to writing daily (with some others) for a period of 30 days as an exercise in free-form expression. This invitation stands for anyone who feels the inner call to express or create. Why do this you may ask? Because, for me, whether it is through music, visual arts or written word - to express is to live. No matter what is said here, it is an open door into my soul; a light shined into a dark and packed closet wherein lies things I've long since forgotten about. Maybe some things that are best left where they are. We all have our things like that don't we? The time is here now to clear away some of these notions, ramblings and hear-says and discover what's behind that door in the unused room down the end of the hall. 

I open with this. The first picture of 2019 (above) taken by me as I walked from a marshy area back to civilization just after midnight NYE. What does this image seem to want to say to me?  It is not full frame and there is a reason for why. Maybe you can deduce that one for yourself. The road ahead calls; ever open to head out upon. A limitless destination says "here I am, do you have the guts to come my way?" Staggering through life I often fall like the lame hurdler who always crashes yet gets back up and, paying no heed to the other runners that fly like graceful gazelles, continues the run to face the next hurdle ahead with confidence.  This is my way. Never in a straight line as it were. 

So...I see that the new year begins here with a single step into this dark yet beckoning road. I am not so brazen as to plan, and to expect, that it leads where I may desire it. It is its own blank page that I am merely a contributor to and an observer thereof. Sure, I make plans but we all know where even the best made of those usually winds up. Paving some other road it seems.

From this road I can traverse to all others and find, or lose, whatever it is that I've been looking for or needing to purge myself of. It is an invitation to move beyond the present and a promise of a future to be had, not without peril or cliffs to fall from mind you. But a road nonetheless. Blindly imploring you to take that next corner or turn without a clue in the world as to what it may hold. The not knowing is the part that keeps me alive and ever growing. Like Bono once said, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" and that holds true for me as well reader. Maybe I never will. Maybe a part of me never wants to. 

What is there to be found down that road off in the light and under the Spanish moss hanging from the trees in the solemn, quiet hour with the marsh frogs singing? Only one way to find out and know for sure. 

Stumbling onward -

Hal