;)
I had a big post planned for today and this image was not a part of it. Before I went to bed early this morning, I selected 24 images from which to build today's post, put them in a folder and then selected 22 more which I put into a separate folder as raw material for tomorrow's post, as I will be traveling and it might be difficult for me to put one up.
I believe both posts would have been quite good. Tomorrow's would have had particular impact to long-term readers familiar with the people who appear regularly in the part of my life that unfolds in Wasilla.
Instead, I am posting this single, solitary, blurry iPhone photo of my good friend Jim. It is the first and so far the only photo that I have taken today. I took it right after I woke up, before I got out of bed, as Jim lay upon my chest, looking at me.
In my mind, it is appropriate that it is blurry, because to me, when I first wake up, the world is a blur, anyway.
Right now, especially. I suspect that everyone has days when the course of life seems unbearably hard, when the day ahead seems to be an impossible one. Today is such a day for me.
I must leave for Anchorage in about six hours to catch my flight to Phoenix. Between now and then, I have about six days worth of work to get done. I don't know how I can do it. In fact, I can't. I must also finally get my hair cut, my beard trimmed.
But that's not the hardest part. It's always like this when I leave home. It's never any other way. I always think that next time, I will be efficient and organized, but I never am.
The truly hard part is that I am leaving to say goodbye to a friend. And I hope to hell I get to Arizona in time to do so.
I don't know if I will.
But Dustinn tells me that the doctor says his dad is the toughest man he has ever treated, that no other patient of his has ever endured so long through the same trials.
Yes, he is a tough man, the toughest kind - yet also the gentlest kind. And good. A truly good man. A talented man. A great artist, fantastic musician, poet and humorist, husband, father, grandfather and friend.
So I yet remain hopeful that I will reach him in time.
Vincent Craig, I love you.