The Strap

I saw a black strap stretched across a white table. Nary an explanation could I find as to how it got there or why it was there. Was this strap still useful for the purpose for which it was created to fulfill? By now the holes were too big. The cracks were everywhere and quite noticeable. Clearly better days it had seen. Yet as it stretched itself over the width of this table it seemed so regal. It projected an air of arrogance that clearly it felt it belonged where it was. To its way of thinking it had earned the right to be there and was insistent on staying. The defense offered up was one of determined defiance.

With dogged intent of purpose, you set out on your way hoping you can find along your paperless trail you purposely left behind what it is or was that caused this knee jerk seemingly illogical reaction. As your feet throbbed with persistent nagging pain you sought a place where you could allow them the rest they longed miles back in the journey to capture your imagination be it real or not.

Looking around at this wonderous place you find yourself in all at once you notice the dial on your compass points to neither North, South, East or West. Remembering your faithful all-knowing all in one multi-purpose sleek slender device resting comfortably and contently quiet at your side.  Curiously it had not uttered either sound, syllable or song in what seemed like an inordinately long period of time. How is this possible? All leading indicators are positive. Upon closer inspection you notice the time appearing before you is none that you have ever seen in that format. No function can be initiated. Your hands tremble with the fear from the uncertain state of the state you find yourself in. Nobody seemingly exists except for you and you alone.

Using your best shrieking cry your quivering voice calls out loud. Where am I? How did I get here? Am I even alive? If I am alive I must be so. You resign yourself to the fact that you are not to know anything as it will all be revealed to you at the proper time. You summarily reject that notion. In its wake, you entertain the possibility an insect could have inflicted you with an insidious disease. The other theory you kick around in your salacious mind is you overdosed on psychotropic medications and are in a semi-comatose state in a hospital that has the capability to restore you. This theory like the others is summarily dismissed.  It’s useless! There isn’t anything to form a personal consensus opinion on.

A flock of flying geese en route to south of the border whisk their way overhead with their wings in the correct position to maintain lift. That is if the above does indeed hold true. By this time you are inconsolably crying. Hysteria has overpowered you. Something has to give. Let me just get there already! Ahh but here again to get there you must know the direction where that is to plot a most efficient course of travel with no guiding light to assist you.

The juxtaposition of the rising moon sideways near the setting sun cannot fail you. Both are in your line of vision clear as the glass you see through. And so it begins. A powerful thrust from your legs stands you upright and tall. Confident in your uneasiness one-foot tiptoes in front of the other. Closer still closer you come to the end of being a nowhere man. “Doesn’t have a point of view. Knows not where he’s going to. Isn’t he a bit like you and me? Nowhere man, please listen you don’t know what you’re missing. Nowhere man, the world is at your command.”-Nowhere Man- The Beatles.

The pace of your already brisk walking has noticeably picked in both velocity and ferocity. Have waves struck the receptors in your brain unconsciously alerting you to something but you don’t know what it is, do you? You will either not ever know what it is you are flailing in the wind to know or it will be positioned in your mind that you have always known what you were haplessly seeking to know yet you did not know that you knew it. Man needs to know that he knows what he needs to know but being ever attuned to the fact there will always be more to know that he already knows that he knows.

Back to the journey to wherever it is you are not sure you are going but are determined to arrive at that pre-determined destination forthwith. Every couple of days you pass through another farm, city, town or village that bears a striking resemblance to others you have passed along the way. The arrival or disembarking of your presence is not noted. Nary a speck of gray dust has reacted to your being in motion with a corresponding motion of its own. Doesn’t the wind of a man dislodge something or cause a change in its location or position as he tramples his way on by?

“But oh Lord we’ve got to fight. With the thoughts in the head with the dark and the light. No use to stop and stare. And if you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there.”-Any Road-George Harrison. “I shall be telling this with a sigh. Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” –The Road Not Taken-Robert Frost.

You, we are wandering wayfarers but we not necessarily need to be so. We have both function and purpose. It is easy to lose either or both along the way. The bigger question is how do we reign in what has escaped us so as to get back on the track we were on or turn another way around. Change is a given constant in life that we cannot change. So may choose to fight change by succumbing to it as if it were a terminal illness where you lay down curled up in a fetal position closing your eyes while waiting for the end to come. Others try to adapt to change by molding It into the fabric of life as they know it. Each will handle change in accordance with themselves.

You want something from life but you do not know what it is or how to find it. Where you are is not where you want to be but how do you get to where you do want to be? Enlist the help of those you have confidence can help you fit each piece of your life into one frame. Ideally, you should be the guiding force in your life. Yes, there is a way to get there from here.

While Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters. Sons of bankers, sons of lawyers. Turn around and say good morning to the night. For unless they see the sky but they can’t and that is why they know not if it’s dark outside or light.

—Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters-Elton John