I feel as lost as always but these days I wonder with a whole lot more gumption. This little life is as meaninglessly meaningful as you allow yourself to be. We all make an impact (with intention or unintentionally) and by the end of the day we must all live only with ourselves and how we’ve coerced our values and the words we’ve said into the deeds we’ve actually done.

When I do whisper into the infinite, “Let me be true to this existence. Please let me find lessons in struggle. Help me rise to be better than I was when I awoke. Help me become one who can challenge positively. Please allow my mind to seek lessons that open it in ways I couldn’t’ve obviously perceived. Please help me be able to protect that which I love and those that I feel attached. Let me forgive and give thanks to those who came before.”

In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.

I love looking at maps. I find myself entranced by them, human infrastructure, art, patterns, visual history, what’s not to love?

I was looking at one of Augustodunum and it made me think that the city its self must have been a significant investment in land, labor, capital, technology, ect.to make that town happen in roman times. A little Rome in a foreign land for a foreign people and a hand full of Roman entrepreneurs and authoritarians. The changes the city was part of and home to had and impact that lasted untold generations on that area and history.

I found myself staring at the walls that surrounded the town and wondered how dangerous it must have been to identify as or with the Romans in the area around the city, especially outside the walls or in the surrounding boonies. Kind of like the Baghdad Green Zone or our little fire bases that dot Afghanistan. It must be dangerous to work with what’s perceived as the empire out in the sticks where the empire only rules when it is physically present.

I wonder who will occupy the walls and the mounds of mud when we have left in all the places we occupy. I wonder what they will think of us, I wonder what history will say. Will we be spoken of like Rome in myth and power, rises and falls, wars and control or will those who come after have other things to whisper and different things to say about us? How will we be remembered, what will out legacy be?