an old prayer

"Music, rescue us from our youth. It is big enough to destroy us all." us ca. 1999.

My friends and I have saved the world at least seven consecutive summers (some of us more), and I am only now beginning to feel the dull and fading effects of time. RJ is putting together a book of the last few years at the house, and I was thinking about how difficult it is to transmit nostalgia to someone who wasn't there. When you see young skin in old photographs of people you know it gives you an awareness of the only fact: decay is constant. We scream from pictures: "I am a glass of water. I used to sparkle."

The insight seems to come a bit early. I've never imagined living all that long, but I think that assumption was linked to my idealization of brighter stars with shorter half-lives. Time is, after all, very good to some people. Maybe I can have a dry-docked sailboat I work on for nine months out of the year, and sons who bang it up against everything in the sound for three. Then repeat until they feel their own peaks passing. For now, i feel as far from this as I am from the birth canal, and I have no plans of purchasing any sefaring equipment that doesn't say sperry on it for years. I have been a little ocean obsessed lately, maybe some salt air and wind can cure it. Anyone for a trip down south?

all aboard...

james.