Time Lapse

I am awash with mystery. I swim with the confused.

Outwardly, I am normal like that guy and that guy and that. But inwardly images and sentimemnts swirl like Spirograph gone out of control. There's a turbulating turmoil of thought, desire, franticness and fractals.

This guy that writes this, he is no different than he was twenty thirty years ago.

Yet he is.

No, he still aspires to the same sensations, the known qualities to which he has grown accustomed over the years. He reaches for that which he has reached since his youth.

But he doesn't.

It's so very strange to change. The years pile up and an odd morphing takes place for life is not static no matter how long one lies on the couch watching television reruns.

Yet, all the while, little pieces of youth are being demolished one by one, crushed under the weight of an ever-heavying clock.

People die. Those icons with which I grew up have been dropping like errant flyballs in a Little League rout. And each time one passes, I feel a bit sadder. This has been one of my mysteries.

I didn't know the person. It's not as if he or she were family. Yet, in a way, they were for there was time spent together as they came into the living room once a week, or maybe five times a week, in the morning or evening to play out stories which kept me enthralled.

And I grew to like them. (love them?)

And now they have succumbed to the same forces which tear at us all.

The warm homeliness of Mayberry lies buried in the past. But I know we lived it. The mystique of a wild wild west with tight pants and beautiful belles playing in dark realms of mad midgets and daunting giants has faded from all imagination. The thrill of boldly going where no man has gone before has turned into trepidation that maybe moving forward is a bit less desirable than before.

How did it all get this way? Why do my father's once strong and steady hands now shake?
And why have the mysteries that once called out so richly and deeply become quietly sere?

The shore is rapidly shrinking as I glide into dark waters under full sail. I leave a large part of me behind, but still carry it with me.

The confusion seems normal. Maybe it will all settle one day and everything will start to make sense again. Or maybe nothing ever really made sense, and I just told myself it did.

Anyway, the fractals aren't unwelcome.

Only disconcerting.