I usually try to pick something longer for these morning missives, but Hercegovina piqued my interest with this one. It’s like the soundtrack to a dream that you wake up from and can’t piece together ten minutes later, and you can’t remember if it were a memory of something that really, truly happened, or just a dream. It’s like echoes that still resonate but no longer quite resemble the original sounds. It’s a mystery that you never quite manage to solve, despite all your efforts. All this in mind I’ll take the 34 minutes. It’s enough.

We pedaled down the Jersey waterfront yesterday. It leaned toward cold and even threatened rain and snow but that never quite arrived. It was peaceful and beautiful and affirming. Good days can still come if one is open to good days. Good days don’t have to be ideal days, because ideal is an arbitrary measurement anyway. Ideal can be anything that ideal turns out to be. And the most important takeaway is that often good things just happen. You don’t have to seek them out. All they require is that you get out of bed and walk outside. Certainly bad days happen the same way but it’s more likely that the day will be good if you allow it to be. I’m more at peace this morning than in a while. None of the negative circumstances have changed. There is more balance though, and balance is important.

“Courage to change the things I can.”

As opposed to those other things.

It’s a blessing to find love and companionship at any point in life but more so when you’re in the last quarter. It’s a privilege to be seen with zero judgment, and feel comfortable being seen. It’s a gift to be able to be yourself, even for a short time. Bear in mind also that to be able to do this you often have to have done some work. It’s not just the grace and kindness of another party. You have to have learned to accept if not love yourself. That may be a sliding scale. Where am I on that scale today? I haven’t quite sorted that out yet, but it’s probably closer to the accept end of the spectrum. That’s more than enough for a decent start.

You may find if you listen to this album today that it doesn’t really reflect a much lighter mood in my words. It’s a troublesome 34 minutes and there’s a lot buried in the mix… ambulance sirens, shouting, gunshots… strife… violence. That’s all going to be happening always not so far from where you’re standing. That’s where the world is and has probably always has been. We’ve just found more creative ways to kill a lot of people all at once. (Here is the darkness that you’re used to from me.) It’s always there. Perhaps though the greatest rebellion, when it’s all so much bigger than us anyway, is to have a good day despite the bastards. Just ignore them and carry on. Our time here is limited. Understand that the promise of eternal is probably just words and you don’t need eternity anyway. You don’t need it. You are here now.