Different Diners - On the same Road

Every journey has mapped a thousand and one roads.

All roads lead to the same destination.

This last stop has two doors, and your travels will open the one or the other.

Upon opening, you will see in both rooms a huge banquet.

Upon the tables, laden with fruits and the most delicate of meats, the headiest of wines.

Each soul sat at the tables has a knife and fork. They are strapped to each guests arms,

Too big to feed yourself.

There is but one difference.

One banquet, the guests struggle to taste of the fare.

In the other, they are feeding each other.

In much the same way, the roads offer either the high pass or the low track.

Each fork and crossroads, every hill and every tunnel,

The minor path and the glorious highway,

Offer the same destination.

It is impossible to turn back.

There is only forwards.

There are deserts and jungle.

Endless cities and barren wastelands.

There is but tomorrow, yesterday only your tracks soon blown away or filled.

Often lost beneath the footprints of others.

Some follow, some pursue.

You can travel alone or choose your company.

After all, everyone finds themselves at the same doorway in the end.

This is the same adventure you have had many times.

It is a journey that is undertaken time and time again.

It is possible to follow your own footsteps.

It is also possible to change the route.

There are many maps.

So many choices.

Many signs are accurate but lead you astray.

Beware of the hitch-hiker.

Beware of the backseat drivers.

But most of all ; Beware of your self.

Amen.

THE COLD ROAD

And so we come to where it all began.

As with many things, the story always fades in as opposed to starts suddenly. The Story is a continuous river and, as it meanders its way from the source is fed and swollen by many and varied tributaries. A birth is the well-spring and those first, hard hours of life cascade from the safety of the womb over precipitous falls to land on jagged rocks drawing the primal scream of shock and pain from the infant lips and untrained throat.

The very essence of fear and shock, those cries. With some of us that cry forever echoes within our heads, often drowning ( and there, if ever is an apt phrase ) the gentler music of early life that soothes the passage from the memory of the last one, via the calm waters of death and the reassuring rhythm of your mother’s heartbeat.. The precipitous falls, carried in the freezing water of renewed awareness mark the first memory that is nothing you wanted. Far easier to have remained between, but you cannot make that choice. There is no betwixt - only the road, the cold road.

Just another part of the Road