Like This Bristlecone

"The Patriarch"

How they know this Bristlecone Pine, growing somewhere in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, is really 5,000 years old, I am not sure.

I am sure that I could have lived in my house for about that long, barring the limitations of shortlived DNA and a husband's proclivity to dwell in a house less demanding of repairs.

Those snarly, craggy roots look familiar. Dry and void of anything functional or nutritious, they nevertheless serve to bar the winds from blowing Old Patriarch over.

I feel that way today, waking up to ponderous prospects of leaving this home of 18 years.

The squeaky hardwood floors, wavy walls, dank smells, awful 70's add-ons, and lone shower in an overused and under ventilated giant bathroom . . . suddenly endearing. Oh the vicissitudes of a broken, emo spirit.

And like the bristlecone, I am bristling under the guilt of Jonah, sick of mind and heart, wishing for a saponin for my protest prone judgements.

Dried out, nonfunctional, wanting to leave but. . . stuck.  I am the bristlecone pine. Old and worn and enduring; a monument to time, but nothing more.

Which elixir wants to try

Now that TwentyTwleve is dry?

I've declared an end to drink

That puts an end to normalThink;

And J and T have joined m'e rite,

God willing, 

Three strands stay the fight.


note to all, from 2015: GoodLuckWithThat.