There's no fast way from there to here, wherever that may be. Or to square up what it meant to you with what it meant to me. It's where we used to live. Where we used to live. Comes with a strange sense of relief that the highs and lows attached to then have leveled off in time. As distant here and now from the place where it once stood, that place we'd shared in time. It's where we used to live. Would you recognize it now, as one more passerby? Is anything left lingering in the corner of your eye? It's where we used to live. WHERE WE USED TO LIVE.
I may well rue this yet. But just for once, let's just forget the invitation of the backhand surely on its way. But suppose it's not so much a lifting up as drifting back, the way the darkest nights still pass into another day. And life goes on. And life goes by. And so, with a bow to that which follows on, ever further past recall of just where I'd begun to sense the voices and the features disappearing from the mind's eye. The influences fading ever more with every year gone by. Or where my walk away had turned into a run. Never fell for the optimists. But just as well to consider this, that maybe all of the fatalists were every bit as wrong. That nagging voice that said, You knew it and you blew it, kid. It all came down to choices all along. All of those times so quickly given to frustration. Still, who would ever care to be so disingenuous to bat an eye and wonder, Just whatever was that anger for? Knowing well enough, that little bit it took from all of us. Left to sift through ashes of all of the times that I knew better, and still let myself get played for a reaction. A parting gift to all who pulled the strings and got their rise. Denial of a final satisfaction. Let go of all of the times I took this life as a defeat. A bill of goods as sold with me left holding the receipt. No more recrimination. No promises, no proclamations. You pay your way, and then you go. With every year gone by. THE INFLUENCE IS FADING ever more with every year gone by.
We said this all before we were scattered to the four winds. Set against the inchoate roar of a stormy summer blowing in. All racing hearts and long goodbyes that passing June, and I was restless with the waiting for the story to begin. But something else had been betrayed, reading in between the lines of the promises that we had made that the years would never redefine who we were, in memory of the people that we used to be, already turned to ghosts and fading from my mind. In the nerves and the confusion I wish that we could claim that we were under no illusions, even if we couldn't name the ways that we could fall. To set up the impossible, the way those truest words were spoken like a vow. Per chance, we'd meet again upon the far side. A bit more banged up for the ride and that chipped off and blown away, left glittering behind. With a promise not to lose each other in the turns again. Or would we just say things that people say and know the difference, in the end? It was no one's intention to deceive. But it was so framed in the absolutes, the way we'd so believed that makes it hard to reconcile with the narrowed eyes and wary smile that speak on without speaking, “Yeah, YOU SAY THAT NOW.”
Something in you whispering, goodbye to the crash and ride of those nights past, the reckless run begun to fade. Times like these among the loneliest you'll see as you pull away and begin to be, for all of the times you were afraid of that inside you taken wing. The tremors that you feel, they signal an awakening. These are disturbances of spring. There's bitter to the beautiful. The clarity unfolds in some turns that would break your heart as some will turn their backs and say, “Hey, you've changed.” The stories someday to be told in the friends you'd had. The friends you'd lost. And those you'd kept along the way. And if how that felt recalls a familiar sting, from who you were to who you are, the passage bears a reckoning. These are disturbances of spring. Something in you whispering, it's done. And gone again, to send you on past the end of Chapter One. Steadying your feet against this trembling at northward motion. These are DISTURBANCES OF SPRING.
“Will you sit outside with me awhile?” she said, “You know I'm a creature of the night,” she smiled. That night becalmed as the world sped by. I'm wondering out loud. Word's been, you're running with a faster crowd than these quiet words by moonlight would suggest. That side of you they never would have guessed. That side of you that I loved best. It was something that you'd come to recognize as happiness, by having come to know its absence. And it lingered in your wounded eyes, THAT NIGHT BECALMED as the world sped by. With the feeling of her leaning into me. As long for here, or not. For once, be still and let it be. Just let it be.
Sure, I think about them to this day. Who’d believe a soul who’d claim to never feel the sway of these things that share the manifest? The waking ghosts and all the rest kept at a distance now, and softly bid to stay. And if those days gone by seem unduly bright, here’s hoping time taught well enough to beware those tricks of winter light that leave waking hours in dusky haze. Remember how the only ways some things are seen, by facing straight into the night. Names faded from the manifest and not retraced. If I was less than diligent in all of the times I’d tried, remember I’ve not been alone upon this ride. Now the punch line tragically makes sense, how our little tragicomedy played itself out at our expense. And what speaks to a loss more than the kind of time we cost each other? Trying to force the phrasing of things better left to inference. It seemed a failure of empathy, and not much more. The times we failed to see things eye to eye. More and more as the years went by, as well-intentioned as the gesture seemed to be. Names depart the manifest. If time’s erasure took the best of all of those no longer by my side, remember I’ve not been alone upon this ride. And as the horizon reemerges from the east, let it be drawn upon a new day rising, quietly released of bitterness and all regrets at the places we’d passed through. No explanation tendered, and no explanation due. Names gone from the manifest and not replaced. If I was less than diligent in all of the times I’d tried. Names depart THE MANIFEST. If time’s erasure took the best of all of those no longer by my side, remember I’ve not been alone upon this ride.
Walk long enough and maybe, in time, the woods open up to A CLEARING ahead. And the treetops rise toward a widening sky, come the morning light. My old, unlikely friend. I'll never know why you never did leave, in the face of every reason one could ever conceive. For all of the throes in the darkness. Still you bobbed and you weaved and held on. You held on. So let's take a chance against the hope blowing back and bid those darkest years be gone. A little bit of celebration is in order now and then, wherever you may be tonight. My old, unlikely friend.
I'm thinking that I've kept myself too long. This dwelling on this living down, whatever had me so convinced that those years were something they were not, and what had set me out and kept me running ever since to square the us of there and then. Let's just split the difference and move on. You knew me to react, force of habit being so strong. Forget the right or wrong, and it's all just a sad crash of stumbles and swings. The kids we were in ways we couldn't understand, never mind accept. To believe that we were steering when we were only being swept on through the spring and spun out here at the edge of fall. It's all that would remain, to leave the last words where they stand in a long-abandoned argument. I've got to save my steam for better things. Waking in the still. Those years have long gone by. And I'm left standing somewhere far away. Waking in them still, but I am clear of the us of there and then. Time to SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE and move on.
So what if we decide that we will put it out of mind, as best we can? The disbelief. For disbelief will rob you blind as fear of time turning less and less a friend, whatever else conspires to send us on toward another lifetime not resigned to either disbelief or fear. The signposts left unvandalized all leading out, away from here. And so I can’t recall where it’s been said that only half the story’s made by what we write, the rest by what gets read. In what glitters on in those we’d touched, in recollection. One more thing to take along to light a way ahead. Passing in the traveled lane the neighborhoods, the lighted houses blurring in the corner of your eye. These last impressions flashing by. And it may seem a lot of past to be turning your back to. But this would all be moving on toward something of value. All of this gathering quietly turned to sorting. Accelerating in the traveled lane, the lighted houses tearing in the corner of your eye. These last impressions say goodbye. This will have to do, whatever else i wanted to tell you. We all want to leave behind something of value. And it may seem a lot of past to be turning your back to. But this would all be moving on toward something of value. We all want to leave behind SOMETHING OF VALUE.
Words and music © 2015 Richard E. Mueller
Summer in Ohio Music (BMI)