The Hermit Of The Valley

He's the hermit of the valley he calls home, far from the mountains, far from the humans, surrounded but alone and on his own. Some days he's a king. Some days he's the poorest man in the valley, a man who has wondered and wandered, like a spirit in exile. He has wandered the Earth as he has wondered all the while a thousand realms within his own mind, hoping to find the thought or the place that would make sense of the senses, answering every why and every how and what to do now. For it would seem the old show has faded into television snow. Where, where, where should I go? I don't know. Conjured from fog as if this were the very day of creation, does the road ahead even exist? Did it ever? Will there ever come a day when I should venture into that dense expanse to find nothing there at all? What will I do then? Forever fall? Time sneaks around in the background, taking whatever. It takes and it takes and gives back never. It turns the subtle into gross and the gross into the empty void left behind. People, even places along with the faces, fade and fade away. Taking, taking body and mind, leaving nothing behind but the hell of an empty shell. Long in the tooth, long in regret, we always remember what we could never forget. Moments come, and moments go. Why do you remind me so of what I already know? To stand in the same place with a slightly different face, explaining how it's somehow no different now than it was before? Am I still here? Is there any more? Is this still me? On a far flung planet, standing on the ground to which I'm bound, not an angel to be found, no matter how I look around. For it seems I'm awake and not in a dream where the harshness and the starkness fade behind the gleam of a haze of a few blurred lines so that everything seems fine with all things divine within this reach of mine (if only I would try.) It gives the illusion of a choice that I didn't really make. Of a stand that I didn't really take at a time of choosing while lost in all this confusion over an illusion. Constantly musing that I have always been, yet I never was at all. Never the same as before the fall. Never noticed, never seen, never there at all. Not even for a moment. Not even for an instant. Not for the blink of any eye, for even in that instant, one needs to be seen as if to exist at all. It all depends on what we see, for the elephant in the room or the alien in the stomach will certainly be noticed in a timely manner. But who knows how long either has been there, invisible, beyond notice, obscured by distraction, fog, and time. There is a feeling of irrelevance out here on the perimeter, out here in the darkness, in a place beyond all thought and anything remembered. Can we really exist as these remote islands that are, so very far from anything resembling love of any kind to be found or to find? Going out of our minds? Can the loner on the shore take much more of watching the others sail away all day where the ocean meets the sky, wondering why, why, why, am I still still here today? How is this okay? To be watching the sun settle beneath the waves, still standing in the end, the very end where the depths begin, for whatever sin for which a soul must pay again and again. Yet I am surrounded by life, by beauty, by green and growing things, where every scene of life and of living brings deep thinking and deep dreams, yet still seeming so barren in so many ways. All green has a bit of blue, and that blue is the last bit before the light leaves too. I see beyond what is around me, this present day that has found me and bound me, to what is and could never be. It makes me wish my senses would just stop now and then, at what is, never going beyond the barriers of what might have been, for there is nothing more lonely than if only, if only, if only. That dreadful echo that never ever ends. That infinite divide, a chasm with no bridge to the other side. For the flip of a proton, go I. For the collapse of a waveform, hello. Neither the wiser one nor the luckier one. Just I who never thought I'd be the old hermit in the story. I had always imagined the end to be quick and permanent, something that just happens so fast that I would have never had the time to think about it. See, it has been proven! I can be wrong at times. I certainly was wrong about this. For it very well seems the end has already happened long ago. I just happen to be still alive, indeed living in an avalanche aftermath of afterthought. Maybe God's greatest punishment (or the cruelty of random chance and chaos) is for a soul to have plenty of time to think about it. You might think I am being a drama queen when I say that everything that (for me) ever really mattered is over. But it's sure feeling this way from my point of view. It seems to me that I am merely running out the clock, hoping that I get things as best prepared for my kids to give it a go instead. They're still young, and they still have chances at a life that is long gone for me. Oh there's a lot to think about at this point of a human being's life. There's a lot I wish I would never think about at all. All the little sources of joy have been leaving me one by one, just like my beloved. One by one, the room is getting empty. Ah but here I am. I keep trying to see things differently. I keep trying to change these deep blue lenses for something that could cast this life into something a bit brighter and a lot more cheerful. I have tried and I have tried and I have tried. But this shadow of loneliness, loss, and dark depression cast over my world just so difficult to escape. The Sun is out there, somewhere, I guess. Sometimes I have been guilty of chasing an illusion instead, knowing it well for what it is, but refusing to let go. A very beautiful and smart lady by the name of Jewel Kilcher said (sang) it best, that a starving heart can hallucinate. Now while I know absolutely nothing about this lady's life beyond her music, I can certainly say that I understand that concept and identify with that sentiment multitudes and magnitudes beyond how I ever have with any other. My own heart has been bad to do this. It keeps trying, reaching out for a reason to hang on to, sometimes even a person. It reaches for what I logically, intellectually, know I can never have. Sometimes, for what I know I could never be. Maybe it is not going as far as turning monsters into angels, but expecting a divine light from fallible human beings, placing them on dangerously high pedestals, and just expecting far too much.. Even when they're honest and up front that I've been in the wrong place, asking the wrong questions. Maybe because the alternative (reality) is just too damn frightening for me to face. As I said earlier, I expected the end to be a lot of things, but subtle was not one of them. It just didn't come at me in the wide open and maul me like a lion. No, it was more like a weasel, just stealing in the darkest night. It stole from me slowly, one thing, one chance, one dear loved one at a time. The end did not come banging on my door announcing itself. I just began to find my house emptying out a little more each day. Losing Marsha was the biggest kick to my heart. It was so damned unexpected. But the truth be told, I was falling apart bit by bit long before losing my baby sister. The real kicker is that there were some things about that I would never talk about with anybody but her. She understood me. Others did not, could not. My baby sister and I had a few demons in common, that we each understood what were like to have to fight against. Many loved ones loved and cared about me, but only Marsha truly understood me. With her gone, there's nobody left who does or even can. Though I have found myself talking about some of these things to that illusion, 'My' Angel, That one person I met a few years ago that somehow can't help but be open with. I'm not sure if it was the weight of my grief that has made me this way. It just sort of happened. Meanwhile, losing my mother and my father, while far more in line with the so called circle of life than losing a sister eight damn years younger than me, still hurts me in ways I can't exactly put down into words. One could have always done better by their parents, especially when they were there for me from the day I was born to the day they died. Although I wasn't the type to shout to the world, "HEY!!! LOOK WHAT I DID!", every time I did something for them. Because my actions were not for the world. In fact, to hell with the world. Was it their damn business? I think not! But, still, I could have always done more and better. Life is hard, man. And the world never stops demanding your last ounce of strength and your last drop of blood. It's never going to be good enough, even when we're dead. Don't expect them to lighten up on you when you start getting older. If anything, it seems they turn up the pressure. And it seems to me from what I have observed, retirement is death. It's probably better to never retire. Although, the thought of dropping dead on the job is not something I find appealing either. Maybe we've just got to be lucky in the way we time it. Just make a guess and hope we're close to being right about it. Sometimes I wish we could know when it was coming. That way we could quit and go home for the last few weeks or so. Hell, I don't know... And that's the problem. Meanwhile, there is life and living, or whatever approximation of it we can come close to. They say loving is living, but that's a whole other fine mess, isn't it? There are aspects I could live without.... And have for a very long time, now. But there are little moments I wish I could experience, little moments I have been missing for all of this life, really, things I wonder if others think about.Does anybody ever daydream beyond the obvious thing? As in the one you love falling asleep on your shoulder, as you let her rest and hold her? Or maybe you share an umbrella in the rain? Moments and scenarios, wonderful yet mundane? Does this sound sane? But, just because some life experiences are common, even mundane for some, does not mean they're not rare, special, and totally out of reach for the rest of us. It would seem that only certain types are lovable, desirable, or even visible. I am not one of those lucky ones at all. There is fare more hopelessness than romance in being both a loner and a hopeless romantic. And as far as for that certain angel, maybe it actually is a bad case of limerence. Could it be? It's more likely than not. Just a waste of time, energy, and even sanity, a prison of a daydream I have been trying half-heartedly to escape from. It's a struggle between the self that knows I must be rational and real, and the self that just doesn't want to let go of the illusion. I think it would be easier if I really did have friends. But these last few years have done nothing but give me a thousand examples of how I have none. I am the Great Cosmic Wie, The Invisible Man that HG Wells didn't write about. Forever invisible, forever alone... And it gets just a bit too rough to handle sometimes.