Monday, December 16, 2013

Full Measure

#reverb13 Day 16: Habits and addictions

Step and Stumble


Kat McNally writes, "Today's post and image come from master wordsmith and craft beer connoisseur, Michael Douglas Jones. How Michael manages to make 140 characters come alive with all the glory and agony that it is to be human remains a mystery to me... you'll just have to follow him on twitter to see what I mean."

Michael writes:

Habits and addictions, some are silly, some serious; when we have issues without answers, they can hold us so tight that we stop moving forward with the life we intended.


Were you able to loosen those fetters this year, and if you were successful, how did you manage it? Did you accept outside help, or work alone?


If you still feel that grasp of addiction or hurtful habits, what will you do differently in the year to come?


I am working on this life; a step and a stumble. The steps are small; the stumbles seem to fall forever. I find that I have followed the footsteps of my father, with his fears and failures, his escapes into excess, until his way has become my own. I have written his words into my book, and recite them often, forgetting my own poetry. My weakness is well known; I walk between two worlds, one of anger and frustration, the other of limitless love. It matters not whether he wrote me this way or I cut my own quill; I can set my full measure in only one world, where I am the writer, the annalist of wonder; one world where I scrape my father’s ink from the parchment, where, even though the trace remains, my word is the last line on the palimpsest.

Oh Pensée, you are the saint in my story, protecting me from the other man I am. If you believe in me, write your words in my book, and it will hold me through to the final page.  



4 comments:

  1. We cannot escape the lines our parents draw through us, as part of us, we of them.

    But you are the annalist, the caretaker, of wonder, always. I do believe, I do, I do, I do.

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  2. Ahhh, our parents' paths. I think Kelly is right, there is part of that journey that will always be ours to follow.
    I wonder if your father was as blisteringly alive and self-aware as you... or as capable of capturing mortal anguish with words as delicate as a butterfly's wing?

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  3. Our parents may set the tone but we write the story and not many do it as insightfully honest and as beautiful as you.

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  4. LOVE this blog and your voice - "I have written his words into my book, and recite them often, forgetting my own poetry." this line spoke to my heart and calls to my soul to remember my own poetry! Thank you.

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