What's left behind...
By: Daniel E. Kramer
What’s left behind?
What’s left behind is nothing. We do it all, and we never stop. We live full, spontaneous, loving lives. We experience the sand, the surf, and the more. Like the caw of a raven, we search out at the horizon to pursue shining new treasures.
What’s left behind is what you are too scared to carry. Sometimes it is sadness and sorrow, and sometimes it is a pleasure and good. What’s left behind is the sound wave of my voice, spanning the universe in some finely attenuated mass of electromagnetic energy. What’s left behind is the dust, the remains of the day, the waste, the leftovers, the unspent monies, the words never said, the memories made and then lost.
What’s left behind is everything. The world has its ties, the kind that binds the present, future, and past. What we leave today is a reflection of what was already given to use from those before us, a genetic legacy of the left behind DNA. Scraps of me repeated over, and over, and over. That is what is left behind.
Welcome the hand me downs, the rusty, oxidized leftovers of the life, and never leave anything unsaid or undone.
What comes next though?
What comes next is the unknown. It is definitive and absolute, but yet to be determined or announced. Oh sure we plan, we ponder, propose and suppose, but we cannot know any more than the fly knows what its next meal will be.
What comes next is sushi dinner, my birthday, trips southward, finishing the semester, my boys and girl growing up, family reunions, hunting trips, visits to Chicago, up north, life. These are certain; these are built into the yearly trek, the annual revolutions; the onward migration of our lives.
Supposing I don’t die…
What comes next for me is more time, less whining, more exercise, less junk food, less yelling, more snuggles, less alone time.
What comes next is watching, waiting, and then responding. Slow response, with entangled purpose and intent, should be the theme of the day. Jokes are okay, sarcastic tone thrown away. Let what comes next be good, sweet, loving, and true. Let what comes next not be what I want or desire, but instead only what I need, and that is all.
But what’s happening right now?
Right now rippling tides of sand cross my river, my life, and my stream of consciousness. Today I am like a rope lost and found, with a new purpose that cannot be known in its past life. Rebirth and rejoice is upon me if only I can know where to look; it’s an inside sort of job. Gnarled wood, smallest shells, grit, and sand; time smooths all featured things alike, giving definition and memory a sense of hurried resolve in the present moment.
Constant, endless, never-ending waves of time pulsate my beaches. They pound away as a heart beats, pumping cool refreshing mists and waters into those distant shores that I know exist, but almost certainly will never get to visit.
I am walking these beaches, looking for a helping hand, a friend to help investigate them, and luckily I have found one. She is my soul’s mission, a reason to walk the long road. I am on the continual hunt for the lessons of this one man’s short life. In this moment may I experience the mistakes and successes alike, always begging to learn from, to understand, and to live out this instantaneous movement.
Arranged in time’s dusty dunes I see all of this, and it is moving, blowing, dancing grain by grain, off into the abyss. Into my pages and pen, the sand grains drops and flow, scratching the surface. They stick to my page like a lover's adoration clings to the wanted. They stick to the page for a brief moment as I tap them out, and I know that I am still alive, right now.
