The Ravages of Our Revisionist History

I'm not sure if memory can ever be called definitive history.

The Opposite of Lent.

I always forget Ash Wednesday. I find myself wandering the streets, content in a blanket of sound, suddenly confronted by grey ash. I always want to say something. Always want to lean in close, lick my thumb, and help smudge the smudge out. And then I remember, I'd be wiping away God. And I feel guilty. Guiltier.

With Ash Wednesday comes the beginning of Lent. And with Lent comes the inevitable talk of sacrifice. The long waving of goodbye to the sweeter things in life. Millions of people pack their beer and bongs, their candy and cola, into a black ship with a red cross up front, and push it out to sea. Then, a week, two weeks, five weeks later, swim desperately to retrieve them. When they do, they are desperate to believe their relationship with the thing has changed. That distance and time has made them forget the feel of it, the taste. But, fourteen or forty days later, they find that their love is still the same, that nothing has changed. And they're sorry. Sorry to have left it for so long.

I've never participated in Lent. Never spent forty days in a desert of my own making. This isn't because I have some deeper understanding of my own relationship with vice, in fact, its the opposite. I don't understand my compulsions, but I know that they're hold on me is deep and abiding. I, simply, don't have the strength for the rigorous exercise of exorcism.

That being said, I'm going to try something new. I'm going to add something to my life, going to inject my day-to-day with a new ritual. I'm going to participate in The opposite of Lent. Tnel.

For the next forty days, I'm going to write, at least thirty minutes, every day. I'm going to press my back against my burnt black headboard, and I'm going to produce.

So, please, hide the kids, cower at your leisure, and enjoy forty full days of Miles.

Buckle up, this is gonna suck.