Find your bittersweet harmony and don’t let it go to waste

Harmony. Why does it please us so?

Outside, there was a moon a little bit bigger than a half moon, framed in a halo of pale moon mist. There I swayed, a few dance steps to songs only I could hear. Looking up and down the platform. Walking closer to the edge, then seeing the steel tracks extending back west, from where I’d come.

My kids were in that direction. I was mid-journey, waiting to change trains. The hands of the clock were chasing midnight. I could see them without too much of a squint. Maybe my vision was improving after all. I’m convinced that vision is something we do in spirit as well as in sight. Clarity isn’t a local phenomenon. It’s distributed around us, like the air we breathe. We can feel it pass through us.

Melody and harmony. Night music. The beat of the drum. The riff, coming back again to save us. The guitar solo, flying around the beams of the white platform lights, lighting up my soul like 10,000 fireflies on a summer night warm enough to call the grass a blanket.

Last night, the boys and I were in the tent. They stayed out the whole night, camped 10 feet from the front door. I went in just past midnight, when I got cold. There was something about being outside, together, in those cold hours before we fell asleep, covered in blankets and nuzzled together like bears in a cave.

There was harmony in that. A sense of family.

And now, as the train rolls down the track, heading in a northeasterly direction, I can smile inside with the bittersweet sadness of love whispering until next time. This feeling is not something to ignore. It’s a wakeup call, a reason to continue struggling, a reason to try and shape something better.

Sending love to my boys, and to all of you struggling souls who have to say until next time to the ones you love.

You’re in my thoughts and heart. I’m sending you a prayer right now.

-Jesse