Between the Mountains and the Sea

Time moves very strangely here in Kentucky. Most of my days are filled with much the same as the previous day. Wake up, 7 a.m. Leave for Owsley County at 7:45. Work until 5. Dinner at 6. Devotion after dinner. Then running or basketball and reading until bed. But time definitely moves freer here than in other places of the wide world. The mist over the mountains is the perfect symbol of this very point. Once you enter into the foggy valleys of the early morning bluegrass, you are absorbed into the elderly mountains. The haze hangs in the air between the trees and over the narrow roads, like a grey beard over the shoulders of an old man. The mountains seem to tell you that they are much older than you, have been carved since the dawn of time and you are just passing through like countless others and just like countless others will after you are gone.

Anyway, where was I, oh right, time. It's almost like life has stopped outside of Kentucky for me and that it will pause until I return. I seem to be oblivious that another NFK is right around the corner, Nationals draws nearer every day, people are growing up and growing old and all those I hold dear have fruitful lives outside of what I can now observe. I almost feel like I have passed into another realm....a very strange and wonderful one, yes, but far from those I love. Such is the nature of growing up and leaving home, but it does contain a certain element of sorrow, though it is mingled with joy as well.

I'm trying to think of something funny to throw ya'll but things have been mostly surreal as of late. For example, I always wear a 'fuel belt' when I go running on long runs. It looks like a super hero belt with 6 mini water bottles attached. And for some reason, it makes people so confused and shocked. People will honk at me, yell out the window, marvel at the fuel belt like I'm either a strange sweaty, portly super hero or an escapee from the loony bin. But anyways, I was on a long run the other day, about 10 miles, and I had to go to the bathroom...quite badly. So I stopped at a art center, or artisan center (whatever that means). I approached the woman at the front desk and quickly said, "Hi, do you have a bathroom?"
"What the heck is that there?" she replied while contorting her face like it pained her to be so confused at such a contraption.
"It's a fuel belt...for water, look do you have a bathroom," I hurriedly replied.
"It's down there," followed by a vague waving motion like a flight attendant pointing out the exits on a plane.
So, I proceeded down to another woman, who looked at me, head askew.
"Hi, I really really need a bathroom, time is of the essence." I said, before she could ask about the belt.
"What...what are those, mini water bottles"
"Yes. Mini water bottles. For water. For runs. Speaking of which, do you have the bathroom."
"Yeah, it's down there."
Then I found it. But the main point I'm trying to make here is that, for the most part I do not fit in here, and it's quite obvious. I can fool most people with the beard, but once I talk, something to the tune of, "good day gentlemen," the farce is over and I'm spotted as an outsider. I try to fit in, in order to share with people but most of the time, I just listen to other people talk and try not to be too awkward. Anyways, maybe some day I'll be able to sit at the building supply store and chat and spit backer with the rest, but until then, it's awkward water bottle man, AWAY!

cheers my darlings.

quote of the day, from LoTR:
The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.