Tarmac Meditations #197: I Won’t Back Down

“Tom Petty, who died Monday, was tuned in to the blank spaces between our catastrophes and triumphs, when we are desperately trying to sort out what comes next. When we take to running.”

The New Yorker, October3, 2017.

It has been that kind of week and, it is only Tuesday. RIP Tom petty (1950-2017)

A guy I know, from the running community here in town, said hello while we were waiting for coffee. I see him around from time to time and he always asks me, with a smile, “where is your camera?” and “are you shooting any events?”

I told him that I had cut back pretty much entirely but that I was still thinking I could run an event sometime in the near future. “My body is unwilling for the moment”, is what I said. “But my dreams are still alive”. Then he asked me if I liked poetry, I said, “yeah”. He said, “Langston Hughes wrote about dreams.”

Later I went home and looked it up.

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes, 1902 – 1967

Photo Credit

Photo by Michael Lebowitz – All rights reserved.