TEXAS NIGHT REVISITED

When I lived in West Texas, my old blog was called Lone Star Concerto.

Last night I found a copy of a post which I wrote for that blog. It was for a blog essay contest, entitled "My Most Inspiring Possession".
The only guideline was that you couldn't reveal what the possession is until the last paragraph of the essay.

With very little effort (and to my absolute amazement) I won the contest.
Anyway, just for the hell of it, here it is.

My Most Inspiring Possession

Tonight, with one enormous sweep, a warm Mexican wind has blown in from the south - cleansing the immense span of parched earth, scrubbing the sky to an absolute pristine sparkle, clearing the clutter of cobwebs from my weary mind. These are the Texas nights that I love best, when an impromptu drive in my pickup truck can quickly transport me to the dark and blessed solitude of nowhere.

In the quiet after-midnight hours, in the presence of a slowly sinking slice of moon and the ceaseless accompaniment of whispering winds, I dare to savor those gifts which are most precious to me. They haunt me in my restlessness, tear deeply into buried regions of my soul, yet are always soothing in my lonely dispair.

Leaning lazily against the side of my truck, I smoke the last toxic remains of a cigarette and gaze upward into the enormous expanse of star-drenched eternity. In this moment, in this stark breath of reality, I know with absolute certainty that the profound depths of silence always allow us to hear the most. 

The mournful wail of the wind rises, falls, and tumbles out across the endless blind miles that surround me, like echoes of long-ago voices from distant places. They taunt, tempt, plead, caress with the unseen breath of wild temptations - begging me to return to abandoned realms of existence.

The stars beckon in their depthless sea of blackness, reaching out in winking shimmers of soothing light - each one like a jewel in an enormous treasure chest, signifying all the forgotten places and things that once populated my past.

The milky light of the setting moon, drowsing in gold on the western horizon, resurrects a tenderly enchanted assortment of lost loves begging to be remembered. Their urgent kisses, clinging embraces, and soft breaths of unkept promises are more potent than moongold. They still harbor enough burning desire to melt the cold and scarred regions of my hardened, world-weary heart.

The sudden streak of a shooting star ignites the vast darkness with celestial light, then vanishes more quickly than an eyewink, never to be seen again. A minuscule blink in a fathomless universe, like the fleeting lives of all those whom I have lost - once so real and animate, now gone forever in the unreachable distance of the past.

Alone in the clandestine solace of this windswept Texas night, with nothing more than the rusted relic of a pickup truck at my side and the undistinguishable traces of an unpaved country road curving behind and beyond me, I stand humbled and awestruck at the incredible gifts this sacred solitude has unwittingly afforded me.

Dark nights like this inspire the smoldering embers deep within me to burn brightly. All that I ever was or will be, all that I have known or will know, all that I have done in the past or will do in the future seems to clasp me in an all-encompassing embrace that soothes and comforts, amazes and inspires, ignites with brilliant fires of delight.

Quiet nights like this shout loudly with the glorious richness of the past, rousing me from a dormant slumber and filling my soul to capacity with all that I love and treasure the most:

These cherished things, these precious possessions - my memories - cannot be changed or forfeited or tainted or erased with the bitter persistence of time.

They are mine forever.