Why are each journey's impending ends so difficult to conquer? When you feel close enough to see it, but still too far to claim it? As if reaching and grasping at a too-distant destination is an agony worse than seeing nothing at all, nothing to tease or torment, just stumbling around in the dark and hoping for good news. I'm so tired. I know you are too. I'm so ready. I know you are too. These three to four years in this sprawling western city will have seemed so short, and so long, won't they? Both the beginning and the end, the sweet and the sour. It's so strange feeling so contented in some ways, and so restless in others, so patient for a more inviting place for our hearts. I've been swimming in such anger lately, it's as thick and sticky as honey but not nearly as sweet. Thank you for your endurance, your pastoral serenity and faith in the not-yet-complete. But please suppress your fear of me when I'm consumed. It is never for you, my love. It was never for you.
"Well it all will have passed
And it all will have done
With you what it may"
Reminders, Defeats
See it now it is passing you
Plain in the firelight
Nothing new, just happening again
Stiffened and paralyzed
In the sheets
Don't give me a line
I know the change when it comes
Pick all your prizes, get it right
Own the streak
It ain't nothing
And I don't need anyone
To have to explain to that
Everyone's got to carry their own
You got fucked on your way
Well I ain't to blame
For whatever ain't done to you right
And whatever's done to you wrong
You pull your life on a chain
Well it all will have passed
And it all will have done
With you what it may
You can tell both of your parents
That they got it wrong
Pushing you aside
All that anger they left you
Now with their pain
Did you end up with all the rise
From the city that you wanted
You were onto it fast
When I had to face
That somehow I'd never know
Any form of it right
Just it running a waste
That I couldn't take
Well they're onto you now
And you've idled in swamp
I'm done drowning
In the ways that I can't escape
Somehow I feel it like a sting
Somehow I feel it wrong
—Jesse Marchant (LP, 2014)