Its a skill I doubt many have anymore. Reading maps is for loser's I suppose, just throw a pretty color screen in and call it GPS and people for get things like maps.... topography... and how to use a compass. Its ironic that a single instrument, save maybe for the pen/pencil/writing utensil, would have such a great impact on the societies of the world, but could vanish so quickly. Sure, the pen too is dead in most respects, but the compass is alone, blanketed in a lime bath at the bottom of the great hole. A compass gives direction. A compass is a needle to give you a margin of truth in a vast wilderness. A compass guides ships across the seas so wide that the horizon for days is nothing but seas. A compass is a singular truth, made by man, that is reliable, sturdy, and effective. Sure, I own two GPS units [one of ridiculous color touch screen variety; but as my friends in Chicago and Texas would agree, the interstate highway system at peak rush is not fond of map readers], but in a prized place in The Jeep sits my glass compass and sighting guide. When I'm on foot out in places I'm not sure of, there is a place right on my gear for it. Yet, with an electronic compass on The Jeep's navigation screen, plus my fancy color doo-dad, and the roll of charts under the seat; why carry it? Because, literally, it helps my find my way, even amidst a figurative dissertation. I am lost.
I'm lost because I'm confused. Its not that I don't know what direction to take. Its not that I don't know what direction I have come. I know both of those answers. Without those, even with a compass a map is useless. But I know them. I know that at nearly thirty now, I don't have a lot to show for anything. I'm sitting in the basement of my parent's house. I work a job that really is meant for people who didn't go through college. I've managed to stay single for nearly four years. Just as I know where I have been, I know too the direction to go. At least where it is that I want to go. It just doesn't do me much good looking around in the wilderness, compass in hand. I still find myself just wandering around. It bugs me to know that with the knowledge in my head, the pain in my gut, I still wander. I realize that there isn't a lot of things I can do myself, but something should be better than nothing. I like to say that progress, is progress. But stumbling around is not progress. A compass is useless without the will to move in a direction I suppose.
I calm myself some nights, with the logic that we can not have it all. The sky is never within our grasp any more than the earth belongs to any one person. However, we all push forward with some desire for something. Something gives us our passion to peruse in life. Pursuit is a natural state. Chasing, clutching, clawing for a shred of something to covet all to ourselves. In the end the scrap we hold means as much or less to us, as the path to seize it. So I tell my self that on some nights. The desires of the dream amount to as little as it may, provided the path to it is worthy. So, figuratively I keep a compass, and I keep up my skill. Other nights I argue with my own damned logic.
I suppose I could whine and lament about things longer. But then that little voice would creep up; begging me to think about how fortunate I am. Fortunate for the things I own [even those color screened doo-dads], fortunate to have my health as good as it is, for the clothes on my back, and for the chance to get an education. Which I am. I can't say for once I ever argued that I was not. I picked out my own doo-dads, I beat the shit out of myself, but am wholly responsible for the mess, and even if people laugh at the clothes I wear, I know that all of that too, is as good as the school I picked to attend. So I figure its more of anxiety. Its more like the boredom of sitting around purgatory waiting on my sentence. But its the darker side of it all. Its mainly self induced. I know I don't have the kind of job I want because I wasn't a good student. If I was a good student, I wouldn't need a state education. But I'm not. I'm a terrible student in structured courses, because I only learn what fascinates me. I know that sitting around with my friends at night, or mending some disastrous program, did not earn me a letter to law school. I hope that somewhere someone enjoyed my company, or got some program off the ground that got to someone. I know that if I was healthy enough, I'd have taken that offer so long ago for the Army. I know that if that happened, my ass would be getting thrown out of airplanes over Afghanistan. But my knees wouldn't hold out on those 12 mile runs. My arms just gave out before I could hit 80 push ups and 40 curls. Had I been not so Scott like; I could have made one relationship work. Maybe it wouldn't last for ever and ever, but better than it did. I also realize that if I looked like Brad Pitt, it wouldn't have been so hard to make it work. Or at least I could have had other offers to pick from. But nothing happened like that. Instead I just walk around as lost as everyone else it, even though I know where I want to go. How long do I want to sit around.
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