I write tonight, late.  I cannot sleep.  I’ve been awake for hours, and more than I could imagine, originally.  Dreaming of France on this evening, I wonder when I will back on her shores.  

I dream of Normandy.  I would love to see the beaches where our forces fought those oh-so-many years ago.  Where they ran aground, ran upshore, and either lived or died.  Those who fought against all odds have my utmost respect.  

How do men decide something is worth fighting for?  How do they decide to take a chance for something better?  When do they decide that enough of the bad is really enough?  When do they decide to move ahead, not knowing what’s coming or going, what they are losing or gaining, what they have to score?  When do they know?

I imagine myself, this late late evening, on the beaches at Normandy.  With the wind in my hair, listening to the sea sail its sail through the wind.  Putting its stark evidence against my own, setting itself apart from others.  Making me believe in something real, unimagined, and clear.  Something real.  Something tangible.  Something sensational and something obvious.  Lives lost.  Futures secured.  Countries shattered or won.  The end of time.

This evening has been full of reflection and thought.  Full of happiness and absolutely no regret.  Full of people who don’t whine.  People who are happy with their lives as they’ve made them. Full of people who are not cynical, not remorseful, not jealous of others.  For that is what we strive to be, if I am knowledgeable at all.  All of us want to be something, even if it’s for a small bit of time.  For that is all we are given – a small bit of time, in the grand scheme of things, right?

Sometimes I channel my inner Hemmingway  Thinking of writers before me, in their madness, their insecurities, their angst, their energy, their willingness to succeed or fail – whichever their writings and musings led them to be.  The books in my own gallery surround me, haunt me, pull at me.  Telling me stories of the past.  The one from 1834 (not a typo), even, wanting me to know that its 180 year history is enough to make it stronger than my own persuasion.  Make it more a person, more a human than I.  In a way, that book makes me know that my own life is infantisimal in a way.  After all, Columbus discovered America, us, in 1492, give or take, right?

Being a descendent of Native Americans, Lillian and her tribe, I am an original occupant, at least part-way.  I belong here.  This land is my land, this land is your land, right?  On this evening, so silent as it may be, I wonder back to the times when it was, perhaps, noisy from drumbeats.  From horse hooves.  From pipers.  From peace pipes.  When it was a different land.  My ancestors were here.  They lived here.  They died here.  They may have owned this piece of land, in the distant past. If only we still did abstracts in Arkansas!

I am a property nerd.  A sentimental middle-aged (ugh) fool, someone who wants, yearns, desires, for greatness, if only for her prodigy.  Lady Justice stares at me this long evening, hand held high, holding her scales and her sword, longing to kick somebody’s ass.  That’s what, I have decided, the sword is for, in essence.

It has been a night of reflection.  A night where I cannot, yet again, sleep.  Sleep evades me.  But, I am, and have always been, a night owl.  I would stay in the closet, in the kitched of my old house at my parents’ place, phone cord wrapped around the corner, under the closet door, talking to my friends until the wee hours.  Sleeping until I had to go to work the next morning.  Wishing my friends lived closer.  Wishing, like most teen girls do, that I could sneak off in the night with my boyfriend and sneak back in in the morning, although I never tried it.  Too scared of my parents’ wrath, but too respectful at the same time.  Musing.  Gone.

On this silent evening, I heard the coyotes sing their lonesome song.  They sang for an hour while I was on the phone with a friend.  Maybe they were waiting for me to stop talking.  Looking for my white fuzzy child in the darkness, slow and cute as she may be, a tasty meal for them.  She, nestled beside me like some barnacle on a ship’s side.  Clinging, hopeful, Ready for the journey.  Wherever it may take us.

Silent night.  Holy night.  In the darkenss, with the rain, The avalanche of droplets on my head, above the rooftops, dripping down the rain gutters.  

Now, to buy a rain chain.  I must.  It is my destiny.