A bird I can’t see digs through leaves covering a broken stretch of gutter, looking for insects to munch on.

Dense patches of moisture – clouds – flow through the atmosphere above, like wet weather creeks filling from rain showers upstream.

After my brother in-law died at an early age, I fed thoughts of what I wanted to do, to achieve, to complete, before I died.

I finished novels I had sketched on paper.  I became a published author, fulfilling a lifelong wish that began when I was ten, receiving a professional review from Publishers Weekly.

Then, seeing that I could, I tried my best to fill in for my brother in-law, taking care of my mother in-law when my wife could not.  My mother in-law is now dead (btw, her date of death is a palindrome: 11.02.2011).

I am an old man in thoughts, if not totally at 49, approaching 50, years of age.  My hearing is diminished, my hair is white and thinning, my ankles swell, my skin grows spots, my blood pressure is high and cholesterol readings vary on the unhealthy side.

I have no competitors.

Soon, in a year or 50, I will be forgotten, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

I have no legacy to protect, ghosts/secrets to run from, or dream/carrot on a stick to chase after.

I am just me, one set of states of energy, a simple ego that wants to shine brighter than I want to burn it, my energy nearly given out, living one day…no, living one small moment at a time.

I have nothing to live or die for.

I prop myself up on my sense of humour, my shield that hides the invisible me from the rest of my species.

After all, I am the emperour’s new clothes, a figment of imagination, entropy states meeting fractal math patterns.

I knew that 2011 was going to be a tough year.

That’s the problem with getting older and wiser, seeing patterns that you know will repeat themselves in your lifetime, no matter whether you want them to or not.

I’m tired of being wise or a wiseass.

I don’t want to live to see 2012 but neither do I want to die.

This chameleon personality wants to disappear, fade into the woodwork, melt into the forest, states of energy vanishing before your eyes.

It just did.

Goodbye.