Play on.

I couldn't speak the name. I was somehow hoping I could keep holding my breath, to imprison the moment with a pause button of will. To have more time to reload myself, to absorb all been lain before me. But as with each and every before, this snapshot in time again reclaimed it's movement from my lungs, and the video played on.

Recycled Lessons

Day in and day out, we fight battles, small and large. Some days fewer, some weeks more. Rotating revolutions of recycled lessons to be learned, and, so it seems, a pattern of increasing difficulty appears to follow those who fight valiantly and attempt an openness to at least some growth, to some change. But seems it worst to be one of the many, refusing to face the demons life chooses to send in attack. And so each time a battle is due one, the same wars shall that one fight forever in lost monotony, until the choice to learn, to evolve, to move forward has been made. Yes, new struggles are frightening, in robes of change and unknown, but never knowing a victory over a repetitive rival is destructively disheartening in a way harder to see, but deeper to feel. To never earn gratitude for that moment one's soul realizes it's own strength, to me, is somehow missing the point. Perhaps all these new and exaggerated hardships we are now wrapped in are a sign, a sign that we few have earned this responsibility now before us, the responsibility to evolve.

Long lost sacred rapport

How can one voice stir so in the soul, that when heard, can conjure such vivid ghosts of the past that for a moment, even reality cannot interject. Stars align with lesser fusion than the spark of recognition of long lost sacred rapport. A youth so long ago it truly feels a dream, a voice of proof in memories fleeting reminds, like a scar, that those times were indeed a reality. Emotion swelled, then swallowed just as quickly, to show no weakness in a situation unsure. Could it be? No. Impossible, logic persists. Yet listen, he speaks again... How can it be?

Chaos evolves

To create something new, must something else really die? To be reborn, must there always be pain? Why must change breed so much fear? And is it within this fear that we find ourselves needing a God? One definable point to which we may go for guidance, to lay the blame, to project our demand for reason, for purpose? In these hardest of times, I drown in questions, fear, until change brings it's movement, it's voice. Until chaos evolves into hope, by way of faith, friendship and the simple will, to keep going.

Does matter not the 'why'?

A fog has slowly settled upon my spirit. Dense with chill, it provokes tension within me. A fear of all I cannot see through it's opacity rumbles in my belly, a beast waking. Though the time is fine, rain comes, rain goes, floods have not yet risen to destroy, so why? I ask, why? To sleep to perish, or to cry? Wither slowly & die? Tomorrow's rain or brightening sun, none can burn this fog undone. Does matter not the 'why'? For a cure then, cry these eyes, cry.

Marcus

Marcus is everyone's best friend, when he needs something, or you do. And, so it seems, Marcus always finds whatever it is that is needed. Either by his personality of persuasion, his creative problem solving skills or his ways of business bartering, he finds what is sought every time. Most agree they feel he cannot be fully trusted, such is the way with any merchant that has come before, though. His abilities are so useful to so many that we find ourselves constantly in his debt, each in his or her own way, to the appreciation and disdain of all.

Forced to forage.

We are the survivors of the greatest movement of land that our recorded history has ever witnessed. No one is quite sure the details of this fallout, but we know our former maps are now in essence useless. There exists now water where should be land, mountains where once were plains, roads have split and nature has recaptured so much already. With each day of our travels, we have attempted to rediscover and remap this new land within which we are forced to forage. People are now scattered across foreign countrysides, unprepared for such suddenly independent survival. So many have died in the quakes and subsequent fires, flooding and anarchy. Survivors of these after effects were then faced with a yet deadlier battle, one our group has come to conquer, it seems - the search for potable, or in any way treatable, drinking water.