The hardest thing about writing is capturing your thoughts, before another comes along to crowd it from your imagination. So, today I bought a new journal and took off to find a quiet place, to listen to myself.I loaded myself, my new journal, with its crisp unsoiled pages, my favorite pen and a pack of smokes into my truck. I drove just a short while before deciding to go atop a nearby hill, over looking the town, in which I live.Once there, I began to write...



Watching rainclouds lumber across the sky and broken rainbows, looking for recognition. Hearing the wisp of automobiles and the grunt of distant dirt bikes. The barking of peoples pets, mixed with the shallow thunder growling over the town. An occasional proud rooster crows out to the day. I sit quietly listening, hoping to hear a child's laughter,(No sweeter sound)but I am not rewarded.


No cheery chimney smoke, or church bells ringing. And, this town feels empty now.


I ask myself; Do these people just go to the store to shop and the barber for a haircut? Do they only go to the church to read about God? Is life some sort of robotic function for them? When asked,"What are you doing today?", do they already know or, is life like guessing where the next lightening bolt may strike?


The clouds are closer now, breaking up into smaller bits of ghostly cotton swaths. Changing without preconceived conceptions of what they should be.


I remember, while driving up to the top of this hill, I passed another truck, on the rocky desert trail. In that truck, were two young men, or boys on the bridge to manhood, possibly, and they were pulling behind them, an old boat. The boat had no trailer, so they were actually dragging it along with the pickup. There is no source of water for many miles around to float a boat. After all, this is the desert; So, I would suppose this to be a very odd scene but at the time I found it to be exuberating.


We are creatures of life.If we begin to see each blade of grass, as the same; If we see the forest but not the trees; If the wind is nothing but an annoyance to us; If babies do not amaze us; If you cannot find an interesting pile of rocks, or if we do not ever sit quietly and listen to the sounds around us, are we a part of this life?


And now, the cheery chimneys begin to smolder and the church bells begin to ring; Summoning the parishioners and the laughing children. And I will drive down off the hillside and tell you, this is what I did today...