Reach for the Sky
Some days it hurts more than others. I’m not sure why it hurts, it just does, it always has. It’s as if there is some thing, some invisible, silent being that lay down beside me then snuck deep within me when I was young and never left. He stays with me forever reminding me of the dark place of my first real memory and that dark place that I have been ever since. He assures me he will never let me be fully free of him. No, the dark place inside of me is where he lives and in some odd, demented sort of way is where I find comfort in know he exists there and my inspiration from the chaos that goes on inside of me every day. He made me love and made hate, he made feel and made me burn, I know he’s there somewhere and he knows I’m here. We never stray too far from one and other. In some strange way I have come to grow used to him, welcome him and even miss him when he is away. Nothing need be said only known.
I suppose that’s part, a big part of the reason why I can’t seem to settle down for too long. Too long in anyone place for any length of time only eats away at my soul a little bit more every day. I stay put here for now to help put ease the fires of the smoldering wreck which had been our lives and provide a little comfort to those who birthed me then set me out into the world to fend for myself. I have come to understand how one can love someone who never possessed the natural ability or instinct to care for them the way even the most primitive cared for the offspring. No it is not an indictment on them as people or insult on their desire to do the right thing, that much they had, it is more of a matter of fact of their inherent lack of ability to create a place a child feels safe, any place, real or imaginary. A skill set never achieved therefore never imparted on another. Now that is gone and can never be returned to, only to my great dismay, never forgotten. I have learned the louder we laugh the sadder we are. Once the fires of old age are out I surely know I will seek that freedom of the road again. I have no idea where it will take me or ultimately lead me much less eventually leave me yet I know I trust it enough to set me on my journey down the right path just as it always has in search of fulfillment of my soul. I know now how Uncle Lorenzo felt and why he could never stop. He was chasing his freedom and answers to his life as much as he was running from his the nightmares of his past.
I feel most alive on my way to somewhere more than I have ever felt anything on my way back from anywhere. I am aware of what it is I chase, that is not the question. It’s freedom I chase in every form. I crave it and yearn for it maybe because of those years I didn’t have it. For the time which it was denied me leaving me with only my imagination and what little life experience I possessed at such a young age. I went to bed a boy and woke up a man, not by choice only necessity and survival. It was then that I vowed I would never stop moving, traveling to wherever the wind would take me. I am most comfortable, most free when I don’t know what’s in front of me. I’ve always reached for what I can’t seem to grasp. But you gotta reach for the brass ring, take your shot while you got it. Reach for the sky before it falls. It’s like old man Gene Lewis, a mentor once said to me as we walked for what seemed miles of circles around that yard in the sweltering heat of the Mojave Desert, “ride away, keep on riding and never look back, because once you look back you’ll be back”, a lesson learned like most in my life, the hard way. His words still echo in my mind. He missed it all, the whole dam ride, he taught me what he could so that I might not.
Like a bird lost in the sky on it’s way to wherever it can go I have tried in my own way to be free. I look to the sky and reach to touch the hand of God as I understand him.
A Gypsy Road 
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