The Last Dawn

I was going to avoid any mention of 2022 from a personal perspective. I came out of it still breathing. What more could I really care about 2022? Then I ran across Robin's first Facebook post of 2023. She takes great photos and as usual, this one was up to that standard. It was a picture of her first dawn of 2023.

I missed taking a picture of my first 2023 dawn here in the pucker brush of Maine. I figured I would respond to Robin's post with my own New Year's Eve image on the left. Taken from my dooryard on Sam Page Road, here is the last Dawn of 2022. 

It makes sense that I would post a picture from last year as I have entered a stage of Life that leans heavily on remembering the past over gazing into the future. I used to look forward to what was coming; imagining what might be be on its way and even sometimes making plans on how to handle all that had not happened yet. Now, I'm pretty much done concerning myself with what might be around the next corner. 

Each year that passes now increasingly inhibits my ability to affect events now unfolding nearby or faraway. The futures that are on their way belong to the generations that follow me. All I really can do is pass meaningless judgement on how they are doing. Because I do not feel that I, nor my generation as a whole, deserve any more credit than being able to claim at least the planet did not blow up on our watch; any snide comments or other forms of derision I might be inclined to aim at folks with less years under their belts, well, that would present me as the personification of the contrary "get the fuck off my lawn" old fart. 

Sometimes I am irritated that I have fallen into comfortable and predictable lifestyles that I railed against when I was 40 years younger. I was sure I would not be my father, my mother, or any number of the old fogies I felt sorry for when I had more gitty up in my step. I did not realize just how the process of aging tends to bring with it a universal equalization we all have to deal with. Getting old is no fucking picnic, but we don't appreciate it until it has us by the short hairs. I can now understand why so many older folks have such shitty outlooks. That is a trap I find myself fighting on a daily basis.

I gave up wondering why I am so preoccupied with trips down memory lane. When I really dug deep for an answer, all I came up with was I regretted not paying more attention to the old folks in my life when they would begin to wax nostalgic. I had no time for tales from other pasts than my own. And though I did listen more than many of my contemporaries, I certainly forgot or did not even hear many of the wonderful stories the old farts in my life had to share. So I determined a decade or so ago, I would make sure that even if nobody in the future read my memoirs, I would record them in some fashion so to increase the odds somebody might trip over them and maybe for a minute or two, experience what my life was like in some small degree. 

I have realized that telling tales from a past life is fodder for the tales of the future. So much of what we become depends on what our forebears were and what they did in our mutual pasts. I will continue to offer up my interpretations of  my past so that maybe they will help someone somewhere sometime in the future to crack a smile, nod their head, or just be outraged at the things we did before they were born. If nothing else, tales from my crypt in some infinitesimal way, might help a future life through some rough patches they may be having. 

The Past writes the Future with tales that warn and tales of Hope. To disregard anyone's life experience as unworthy of note is the worst kind of disrespect. Everyone has life experiences we all can identify with, be awed by, and make us cry. Nobody's life is worthless.

Keep it 'tween the ditches .............................................

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BTW - December of almost any year in my life is a month I search out any depression I may have kicking around. My father taught me this through his own battles with the Black Days of Christmas. I cannot use him as the excuse, just as the spark. It is on me regarding my outlook on Life. No one else. 

Later ..........................................

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Music for this post is probably a repeat. It is one of the Top Five songs of my Life. It is a tune I turned to many times over the years to explain the many intervals of Depression. It often helped me dig myself out. Here is David Bromberg's, "Someone Else's Blues" .............. Enjoy!