Much To learn

Today is s my birthdayoday so here goes.

Much To Learn

I saw it in a dream today, and so I share it with you now. So often in life we look to sages to tell us the meaning of things. We read books to enrich our knowledge of the world, or for the  sheer enjoyment of a good story. The point is to decide what it is we're looking for, a direction or something to enhance the experience of living itself.

We turn to education when we're young  to teach us the lessons we need to help us navigate our surroundings. We learn the basics of a rudimentary alphabet, a set of numbers on a line. We absorb the common elements of time, and space in order to orient ourselves to the meaning behind the stars, and the depths of the ocean at our feet. The rest of our lives is spent applying all of this stored information to establish an individual philosophy that we can live by; a creed if you will. Until such time, chum, chum.

That's what the sage in my dream passed on to me as he reclined at table with his faithful wife. We formed our sacred circle within the walls of a sacred space where there were so many people gathered in so many similar places doing the same thing in different languages in every corner. And all the while I heard him say “Is there a consensus?”

I saw sailors mourning beside a lawn, tears wiping upon their shoulders in symbolic tribute to comrades lost at sea. I saw families gathered also in remembrance. I saw the toil of labor, and disgust of tending the vineyard, and yet I found a final destination was not in wasted effort, but in patient reasoning of what I thought too difficult to ponder or preach. I could find a way to succeed! “Chum,chum.”

And then I knew a way in life was meant for struggles. For indeed until we figure it out there is much to learn. The final lesson is don't sorry about the process, it's the journey that counts, and what we learn along the way. So let our lessons teach us. Let those formal years be placed firmly between our ears, and let love resound from the deepest recesses of our hearts!

We must all learn at our own pace, and in our own time, but to think that each must come to a separate conclusion in our own unique way is folly. It all points in the same direction just as the compass rose to North every single time we make a turn in life. It is the map we must orient to true North, and not the tools we choose to get there that matter most.

Amen, and God bless.

D.A. Wittler 7/24/18

The Break

The Break

Six years ago today the world began to change. I never knew that turning fifty would be so traumatic, but it was. She told me so many times before it felt like two strangers living in the same space, but I wasn't listening.  Another job had come, and gone, another year of struggling to make ends meet, yet my heart was still wandering without direction. Then came a defining moment to make me realize I wasn't invincible any more.

Funny how your body tells you so when a bone gets broken, like an arm on a trail in the middle of nowhere. You feel so vulnerable at the mercy of time, and circumstance. Oh, but the break to come was so much more painful. I would have preferred the path to a blissful ending where no one gets hurt, but what I got was a gut wrenching reality check that sent me reeling into a pit of self pity looking up from the bottom with two choices to either live, or die. Well, I'm still here so it must mean karma is real, or God has a plan for every shattered dream, every romance gone sour. It must mean we return to fix the relationships we leave behind, or die living a lie that we tell ourselves will go away if we ignore them long enough.

But I couldn't live the lie any more, and so the breaking of two hearts began another journey backwards in time instead of moving forward. Funny how the break is sometimes what we need to heal our wounded souls. It remains a paradox in time until another moment comes along to tell us we can still live a dream if only we will it so, and God finally tells us he's listening through the voice of another human being. And all we need to do is listen once again instead of beating a drum inside our head that says we're not good enough. You are, I am so let us give life another go around, not like a merry-go-round where nothing changes as we spin, but everything emerges new again in light of love, and second chances.

Amen

D.A. Wittler 7/18/18

Deck with a View

A Deck With A View:

Heron's Perch

I watched it glide in

From across the lake

Silent stable flight

Then landing

Upon a pontoon perch

Like a tightrope walker

Part trapeze artist,

And zen master

Poised precariously

Between the elements

Air, water, land.

In a moment

I was immersed

In silent revery

This icon of tranquility.

Then, without warning

It lept into the lake

Splashing

Took flight again

Entering a strafing pattern

Inches above the water

Towards marshes on a distant shore.

Perhaps hunger drove it

Though in twilight

It prefers to hunt

In solitude it teaches

Patience, and awareness

Of a present now

In which there is no past or future.

And in a last glimpse of flight

I felt a calming breeze

Knowing I learned a lesson

From the master

Who sits aware

Of my life

With its elements

Of joy, sorrow, and despair

Telling  me not to worry

That life is but a transition

From one plain to another

That solitude is profound

Togetherness a gift

Awareness a silent pleasure

Only the seeking have found

Upon a heron's perch.

D.A. Wittler 6/30/18

Atwood Lake Indiana

Coming of Age as A Writer

Into the Long Night

An excerpt from:

The Rolltop Chronicles

(An unfinished novel)

By D.A. Wittler

I want to share with you a journey that began many years ago in my head. It is a tale of a young man who began to realize his view of the world was slightly skewed. It took the promptings, sufferings, and persistence of his senior year in high school for him to see himself in a new light as a writer, and not just a shy kid with no future ahead, and his father's legacy behind. And so the story begins in another time, another place, and in the mind of someone else…

Into the Long night she drove. Bitterness biting at her nose beneath a woolen scarf. Steam rising from a restless breath heaving from inside her. And then there was the driving snow accumulating in drifts along a deserted stretch of country road. “There would be no plows for hours, or even days along this forgotten thouroughfare” she thought, as there were mainly summer homes, and hidden cottages enveloped in an adirondike like forest in upstate New York..

“I have forgotten summer” she mused as her soul flung itself along an uncertain path of self loathing, and dread in a storm unrelenting. The old house would bring some comfort from the cold, but it could not replace the sense of loss clinging to her like intricate designs on a bay window; dark, and silent. Finally there appeared a light, and way home.

She thought to herself “Within this refuge I will find myself lost in memory of trivial things, and wayward sons on divergent trails of hope, and despair, and there is nothing more I can do but pray for their salvation. If there is a happily ever after in each life they aspire to, then what more can a sister, or a father do but hope?”

Once Upon A Dream

A few thoughts:
 I went to sleep, and dreamt a tangled life where there were ornate bird houses hung within it's branches. I heard a sermon being preached, and a good book lying open to so many blind pages falling to the floor. I saw unfettered spaces, and people walking different paces along a path of overgrown weeds, and I wondered why a life of faith must be so complicated when the birds know perfectly well how to fly without these chains of worry, work, and fear that keep us hidden beneath the shadows of a brilliant life of sun, and moon, and a billion beckoning stars  that beg us to see beyond the falling sky. "To life!" I cried; in spite of the ringing in my ears, and the desperation of simply breathing.

D.A. Wittler 6/8/18

Granny Knows

Granny Knows

I hear granny speaking
Like a lonely voice from another room Chimming in every fifteen minutes on the hour
"Welcome home, welcome home"
And I remember when...

Today is here
Tomorrow gone
Those fleeting moments arise
Spontaneous time
Opportunities forgotten
Hope renewed
Regrets recycled as compost
From yesterday's news
Yet memory continues
Reshaping every mistake I've ever made
Striving for perfection
Yet finding rage
Because it is not within me.

I am a fractured piece of pottery
Thrown from a wheel
Baked, and polished
Then soiled
Washed again, and again in perpetuity
Screaming to be heard, and recognized!

I am that sentence striking a chord
Every day of my existence with a word
Noone else has heard
But granny knows my lament
Chimes in every chance she gets
As I pull on chains of perpetual motion
Of time, space, and gratitude.

D.A. Wittler  3/28/18 

..

Maybe I'm Just Getting Old

So it's 06:30 on a Saturday morning, and I'm wide awake. Nothing that a couple of beers, and pizza can do to ruin a good night's sleep, eh? Well, that's exactly how it has been since I realized I maybe just getting old. Even though I had every good intention of dozing off on the couch, the minute I crawled into bed the symptoms crept in with a tickle in the throat, and a third shifter's grin: “Yeah, right, I'm gonna sleep tonight.”

Thank God for Facebook, and a few thoughts that always seem to race into my mind when the moment calls, or I'd be sitting here staring at four walls, and desperation. So I guess it is time to make the best out of a typical situation, now that maybe I'm just getting old.

Maybe I've realized that it's not about the accumulation of years on these bones, but a lifestyle that has finally taken it's toll, or perhaps it's a little of both that made me roll out of a perfectly warm bed, and onto a wonderfully cold couch. Maybe I really am just getting old, who knows?

And then I reach a point on this solitary note that some things are inevitable, like having to run to the bathroom in the middle of the night. None the less, I wouldn't mind so much if that dream I was having would restart where it had left off, and I could slip back into slumber like I had hoped at 10:30 last night. Maybe I'm just getting old.

So, one last thought, perhaps not, perhaps a proper salutation like good night, or good day, good grief, it's only 6:48 in the morning, guess I'll stay up, and make coffee instead!