The light of Dawn

This post brought to you by stream-of-consciousness writing. I was sitting on the beach one day with my journal. I looked up and saw two girls laying on the cliffs above me...and this piece just came to me. A few minutes later, Mel came along and snapped this candid photo of me writing. It captures the essence of my life perfectly right now.

She won.

It was a cheap, tarnished, lie of a trophy, but technically, she won.

If there were a ref in the game of life (some call that ref God or Karma, but where is the instant gratification in that?), she would have been booted out of the game for subterfuge or unsportsmanlike conduct. The game would have been called on account of rain, on account of the storm of duplicity, dishonesty, and destruction she left in her path. In his, too.

Naively I was floating along in the summer sun, surrounded by beach haze, evening baseball games, and local craft beer. I didn't even know I was supposed to be playing a game. And if I had...I didn't know how to play by those rules...or rather, lack thereof. If it had occurred to me that I had to win him, I still would not have disregarded my virtue to reign triumphant. What's the point of a victory tainted by trickery?

A trophy that doesn't shine with the light of integrity has no real value.

And so she rode off into the sunset with him on a foundation of lies, schemes, and dissonance. His noble steed indeed.

I stood alone, looking out at the ocean, pondering the colors of the sunset, the polarity of all things. Thanking God I never learned to play that way.

To the victor goes the spoils.

And to the loser--me--came solitude, the beauty of the setting sun, and the magic of the dawn yet to come.