"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."

This is the 100th entry of this uninhibited, sprawling chronicle that was commenced a year ago, today. And I feel in the deepest abyss of my soul, that this is the conclusion, the final page in this chapter, of this small memoir, my life, heretofore. The next chapter lies still, in blank ambiguity, unfolded and biding the coming time that is to color its lustrous pages. Perhaps, not to be narrated or noted here, as it has been for the precedent three-hundred and sixty-five days, but elsewhere, wherever it may be that I gallivant on to, in the awaited, unborn days, weeks, months, years.



For all my life, thus far, I've lived in fervent bursts, like open-ended dashes between blunted bullets of Morse code. The days gone by have been seasoned with moments of grits and gallant guts; with pluck, lipped and laced with spunk. Nevertheless, those instants have been nothing more than a lightening storm in August, painted strokes of ambition that have not, thus far, discovered how to illuminate the span of the sky for more than one glorious, glimmering second.



Timidness is but a thorn in my flesh, and I know that I cannot linger much longer in this brier patch of suburbia, with all its opulent offers of superficial satisfaction, and all its neatly stacked homes, hinged on the Eastern seaboard; whose inhabitants dress in suave suits made of virgin wool, crisp currency folded in the ironed pockets; who travel in luxury automobiles with interiors of sable black and leather, wearing simulated smiles, their artificial elation exhibited in picture windows, flaunted with extravagant embellishments and wares; their gestures and sentiments, sterile as plastic.



I would rather succumb to the weary waters of death, than be slave to a schedule, to clocks, and to the condescending yardstick that society insists on measuring one another with. For to have such a mechanical, and empty existence would surely crush my soul like porcelain against stone.



I cannot live like that, all paperwork, and paper smiles. I cannot, and I will not. My heart won't allow it.



I wish to be but a warm slip in the body of the Aegean sea, its fluid tapestry, azure, and freckled with ripples of Persian blue, lipped with ivory and cream capes of sea foam; to sit atop the comma of a camel's back, in an ambling parade of spindly legs, crossing the shifting sands of the Arabian desert; to behold the incandescent pin-pricks of stars, in the sapphire mantle of African sky. And I dream still, of bare shoulders rippling with infectious laughter, of intimate exchanges, and to love and be loved, until my very heart balloons with the bliss, and blessedness of it all.



I'll take poverty, it humbles my heart, heals the crippling scars of materialism. I'll take opposition, it is but oil poured upon the fire, the flames of this blazing passion of mine. I'll take struggles, strife, and tears, they make me stronger; they are the set of keys cut for unclasping the door of triumph.



No longer will I waste away in apprehension of all the teeth, and terrors, this world may bear forth. I am not falsely unafraid, but I have penned a promise upon the flesh of my soul, a promise to press forward into the blaze of ambition, to set upon fulfilling my dreams, bestowing the summation of my life into the magnum opus of love, the crux of justice, and the heart of human equality, of harmony.



Please know, that you have all been delicate wings, lifting my spirits, stirring up advantageous debates in the wake of my thoughts, and setting a thousand-some smiles into the frame of my face. Each entry of this blog has been fragile, unpretending pieces of me, broken off, in hopes of leaving a tiny trail along the floor beams of your soul. And in tenderhearted, fervent hope that you will see the potential of your heart, and of your dreams, and find peace, love, and fulfillment in your time.

Title Quote: Abraham Lincoln
Photo Credit: Edouard Plongeon at http://edouardplongeon.unblog.fr