Portage

When we go to play, you flip around and flash around and everything, and then they're not gonna see nothin' but what their eyes see. Forget about their ears.

Jimi Hendrix

"...standin' here, freezin', inside your golden garden..."

Jimi Hendrix

Maybe it's not so bad, so terribly wrong, to take the long way. It's not always the shortest, or easiest, which flies in the aged, supposedly wise face of the more common sensical approach, but it does have, for me, a certain time-acquired attraction.

Something some one wrote recently set me to thinking. Taken in context it had nothing to do with anything specific save for the subject matter with which it dealt. But this statement separated itself from the rest of the piece, and it found purchase. As can sometimes be the case, especially if the timing is right, well-chosen words connected into phrases will stick with me. They come back, often incessantly, at interesting moments, now so much more than a simple point of reference. I find them applicable to more than for what they were originally intended.

But this is not about that particular series of words assembled into that phrase, nor is it about where it came from or who wrote it. It's as much about where they found me as it is where I intend to go with them. I am amazed again, by how such seemingly pedestrian moments can be so illuminating. Maybe even life-changing.

How really different we all are. How our sets of experience are totally unique. How we see and what we see are all pre-determined by

our unique perspectives long before we think we know ourselves and can somehow begin to alter our 'way' of thinking. And, while this sets us apart from each and everyone else from the time of birth until we die, it's at the same time the only thing we will all ever have in common. Yes, I know, maybe that's all been said over and over again ad nauseum, but it finally rings loud and clear to me.

And the best part of having this common ground, now that I understand,is that it's comfortably small. We live, and then die, each on our own, to our own. In between, we do what it is that we do, sometimes not as well as others would have us do, but, it's really not for 'them' to say.

Let 'them' say what 'they' will. From now on, I will strive to live my life as I perceive it to be lived. I spent too much time seeing through eyes other than my own, and now time is short...