Bookmark

 

11-27-2005

 

Bookmarks and headstones remind us where in the story we have left off.  We travel through Life going in and out of events, either as participants or as spectators.  We accumulate experiences either good or bad, hopefully growing and learning from each. 

We toss out judgments and opinions as we go, that others might see the path we are on, and we snap photographs as reminders of where we have been, and who had joined our journey, if only for that moment.

It is a simple process to move a bookmark.  Anyone wishing to backtrack a little, perhaps to spark some reminder as to what was taking place can take a peak before picking up and moving forward.  Headstones, however, can only direct us back to photographs.  They can lead us back to memories of moments shared, but there is no forward movement along the same path.

It is an entirely new adventure we take after having left someone behind.  Their headstone blends into our judgments and it affects our opinions.  We can still move forward but never as the same person we were.  There is now a jog sending us off in a slightly different direction.  We may not realize it at the time, but our course has changed.  All we know is that we now travel with heavier baggage.  It is a weight we cannot put down.  A weight that has become a bookmark of its own, wedged deep into our life.

The pages of our life in Michigan are gray.  I write this in a time when the city is in decline, the economy is getting worse, and yet we stay.  I’m not sure what it is about Michigan that keeps us here.  It is easy to see the reasons for leaving, but we are Michiganders at heart.  We were born here and have grown to accept that our politicians are crooked, our roads will crumble if looked at, and that the auto industry will never shake free of the union’s choke hold, dragging it down to an inevitable death.

Looking beyond the failing economy is not for the squeamish, for it is filled with the carcasses of deer strapped across bumpers, and poking out of the bed of cheap pickups.  For despite the Visitor’s Bureau propaganda, the evolution of Michigan inhabitants has not evolved beyond the whiskey filled, chilly eating deer hunters, who persist in shooting unarmed vegetarians, strapping the lifeless bodies across the hoods of their Toyotas, and proclaiming, “I only kill what I eat.”

At my age I have learned what it is to loose a best friend.  I have grown to understand that life continues on despite all feelings to the contrary.  But how do I deal with a dying state?  Michigan is falling faster than the New Years Eve Ball, and the handwriting tells me that local politicians aren’t about to pull her out of this nosedive.

I have written this article as a bookmark, placing it at a point where I hope someone with wisdom and insight might see it and know what to do.  

 

   

 

3/22/2026
Obviously I failed.