Sometimes someone asks a dynamite question, and it blows up into a blog. I think it’ll be a column, too.
I told a pal about the community we’ve got going on here on Legends. She asked about it, I got to thinking, and here’s something to chew on. I’m positive it needs refinement, but thats one of the benefits of this. (Ah, anyone catch that? That infernal apostrophe is going to be the death of me.)
Waysides
When I retire, I’ll volunteer at a visitor center, preferably by a state line on a lonely highway. I’ll insist they stock paper maps, those old relics by then. “Put your hologram away, kid. I can’t point and draw.”
I’ve always liked those guys. Especially if they had on an old veteran’s hat. Navigators. Advisors.
Here I am in the Now. I’ll trip and stagger and occasionally walk smoothly down the road through the night.
Here’s a poetic version of what we’re doing here: Along this dark and winding path, the lonely little stations keep the lamps burning. I get lost, and stop in. Someone points me back to where I should be heading.
“Morning’s that way.”
The notes, the conversations, the stress-testing of ideas, the debates, the agreements and disagreements, and the wishing of each other well, all so we can do what’s needed, and walk a little straighter towards somewhere.
And so we both travel the road, and man the waysides, keeping the lamps lit and little fragments of paper maps ready.
This is what we’re doing. Yes.
Well, if you take Route 33 towards the mountains…
Thank you.
–Josh
Hi Josh, I love that sentence below too. And I love driving 33 towards the mountains -- if it's the place I know. I drove that way everyday for five years from school teaching and over that mountain in the distance to my house. Thank you for writing. I think we all could write our versions of an essay like this -- what are we doing, why are we writing? Making meanings and connections (between and among ideas -- and with each other, I think), one of my beloved teachers said.
Christine
i really like this one. this part in particular -
"The notes, the conversations, the stress-testing of ideas, the debates, the agreements and disagreements, and the wishing of each other well, all so we can do what’s needed, and walk a little straighter towards somewhere." that has to be part of the definition of why the heck we're here in the first place. thank you, that hit a chord.