The Candle is Burning Low and the Hour is Getting Late

Journal – December 7 2019

I woke up this morning with a peculiar sense of urgency – not the usual “uh oh I better get up” urgency, but the feeling that something was different, or that it was time for something different.  I was dreaming when I woke up.  I was dreaming about a candle burning low and the flame flickering and I could here the spectral voice of “a friend of us all, Mr. Bob Dylan” singing, “So, let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”

While I was busy other places the day has gotten late; very late indeed.  There are probably several reasons why this line of thinking has started.  Not meaning to be maudlin, I am in the later chapters of my life. Turning 67, I have spent more of my life than I have left.  Not maudlin, not sappy, just being real.  Every day is a gift now, and there are many more to come, but, while I may have 10 or maybe even 20 years left, I do not have another 67.  The candle is burning down and the hour is getting late.
My second back surgery is scheduled for next week.  While I have lived well with this bad back for 40 years, I just can’t take it anymore.  I think the pain and weakness is gnawing at me, too, reminding me of my limitations and mortality.  Combining a pending surgery with the reality of the shortness of time is raising hell in my mind.

I have lived an interesting life.  Many people would think that my life has been wasted, squandered, and has meant little, but it has been a most interesting trip.  I failed at several business ventures, lost two wives and a family, don’t own my own house, or have a retirement IRA. My life has been unconventional. I have seen the sun come up over the Canadian prairies, I have seen sunsets in Vermont, walked beneath the smoky winter sky in the Virginia woods, and trailed cows across the vast abandoned strip mines in West Virginia.  I have crisscrossed the country a half a dozen times and wandered around the upper Midwest.  I have danced beneath the Northern Lights and walked along the shores of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern Oceans. 

It has been a strange and amazing journey! And there are so many stories that need to be told.  That may be the biggest drive behind this sense of urgency.  I have to tell the stories while there is still time and while I can still remember them.  The candle is burning low and the hour is getting late.
I have heard that professional writers force themselves to write for a specific period of time every day.  Sometimes they write nothing but words in a row, sometimes they create great art.  It is, I guess, not a guarantee, but it is a discipline.  I have no discipline.  I have established patterns and routines in my life, but I am totally undisciplined.  I wonder if I can become disciplined in order to tell the stories before they are gone?

We shall see.  And, maybe NearCommonSense will be come my way of sharing my efforts with my Faithful Readers.

Watch here and see how I do.