Another Step Towards The Horizon

The packing is over and the traveler has arrived at his destination, eight hundred miles from home.  He is happy and primed for another year of study, and all of that other stuff too.

I am facing another new year of parenthood at a distance.  I don't mind it really; my "children" are grown and they can handle life pretty well.  They consult with us.  They make errors and fix them by themselves, sometimes, and sometimes they seek help; even mine. They sound like the rest of us "adults." One day they graduate and then they must do the really adult things; make an income and take full responsibility for debts and actions.

My graduate school teacher (in a mentor based program we had one) told us that the two years we were there would be the easiest and most productive of our lives.  That we should take advantage of the time and the equipment; to use the opportunity for such fully focused time to work.  He was right.  I never again had days fully devoted solely to thinking about my work and to doing it.  The rest of my life has been shared with day jobs, family and interactive needs.  I may be coming closer to those days of my youth, but I lack the energy I had:  I also lack the panoramic vista of time.

My vista was always a shortish one, since I knew I would be ill in my thirties or forties, but still, it was so many years ahead of me and I had such visions.  I confess, though my eyes have grown far-sighted, my vision of the horizon grows shorter.

My children often wonder why I am not as passionate as they; I am tired and I want to spend my passion at the end of my fingertips.  Perhaps what I find there can do more good than battles -out in the world- of which I may have intellectual interactions, but no physical experience.

At the end of my fingertips and nose I seek to find a vocabulary of allied individual expression, to connect with others from a seat in my house in the dark of the evening, or at the end of a brush by the light of day; hopefully both.