Avoiding Derailment

Train
Originally uploaded by michaelwrice@gmail.com.

...of course I completely deny that we can ever leave behind us the
things we have done and the person we have been, but I do feel that we
come to occasional crossroads, though often inconspicuous crossroads,
where we decide what luggage we will carry on the train and what
luggage we will commit to the nebulous caboose that will inevitably
derail at the first bend in the road and be lost forever.

Such are the words of my good friend Casey Vachon who somehow, in that
brief violent time I so euphemistically refer to as the Kansas Years, was able to decipher the not-so-complex riddles of my existence, and has now committed himself to writing me hauntingly metaphorical emails from the Montana wilderness. An astute critic of the Michael condition (read: postmodern, dualistic, existential), he is somehow able to discern the facts from my fiction. Casey has not only seen the smoldering nebulous caboose which derailed as I took those first turns a bit too fast, he was riding in coach.

The twisted tracks of my life are all too visible. Whether it be
geographically, academically, or emotionally, I, along with a few
others, live with the jagged scars carved by mistakes and anchored
down by the past (the metaphor here should be rather obvious). It's a
discernable path with no clear discernable meaning, a steel tracing of
the postmodern condition.

And though I've been known to reverse course on more than one occasion
I feel that I'm finally at a point where I'm moving forward. Not
charging ahead, not quickly even, but creeping towards something.
It's a pace not conducive to derailment, a pace capable of negotiating
the bends, a pace leading me... somewhere.