I thought I was done writing The Journey but I was wrong. There was still a faint whisper inside, yearning to be written. I sat down in front of my computer a few nights ago and tapped out another episode. Now, The Journey is complete. Now my soul is at rest.

Sometimes I weep when I read what my soul has written.

Keep writing. Keep telling the story until it’s over…until it’s really over.

It is a miracle that any of us is alive by the time we reach…my age. The heartaches of life beat us down, threatening to grind the fragile life from our bones. What man alive has not wondered what it would be like to lie down and die, leaving the pain behind before it is time?

No, I’m not suicidal. Far from it. I am merely observant and I am allowed, yea, entitled to be observant without the judgment of others. Not many have the audacity to broach topics of this nature, considered forbidden by the masses, for to do so surely soils the soul of the guilty, but only in the eyes of the weak and fearful, and I do not fear their judgment.
I am not afraid of death but I prefer not to die just yet because I am so much in love with those around me and their presence brings me so much joy. Isn’t this what the Creator intended? Yes, I think so too.

So, rather than dwell on death, I merely find it a miracle that any of us lives long enough to enjoy the love of another.

Don’t die, Rod. Not just yet, and when you do, rest in peace, leaving behind the faint aroma of hope.

Many many years from now, late at night when no one else is around and an almost imperceptible aroma of love and hope graces the space wherein you dwell, think of me and how happy I am and remember that I was a living miracle, a glimmer of hope, a vessel of love that overflowed at the slightest touch…finally.

This photo was taken in the village of Ayod during the Sudan famine crisis, the picture depicts a small, starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture. The photograph earned Kevin Carter a Nobel Prize in 1994. He committed suicide that same year. He left this note.

“I am depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.”

There are things in this life that a man should never see or experience because their memory burns a hole through the soul that time can never heal.

Their words bathed in tears of emotional pain, writers often offer a glimpse into the hole. They cope by sharing. Their stories are more than literary outbursts of imagination. They are an intricate matrix of existence that borders on the spiritual.

Can’t write when da funk is upon you unless you want to write from da funk and I don’t like writing from da funk.

It’s not a-muse-ing.

He stopped at the doorway just long enough to adjust the dimmer on the lights. The room barely lit with the soft glow of his monitor, he sat down, setting a glass of red wine to his left and an almost spent, smoldering cigarette to his right.  With his hands sadly prostrate on the keyboard, he closed his eyes, wondering what he could possibly write that would make a difference in a life so far away.  How could he muster words of encouragement when his own soul was in need of a gentle touch of hope?  No words tonight, my friend, for tears fall upon…ooooooh.

And this shall be a remembrance for all time, that one man who struggled for literary eloquence and social significance has this night been reduced to one single letter, whispered in the darkness.