Water swirls around me as I step in the river in winter.  It's grip is cold like that of bones and death.  Each bone is shattered and juts at angles peircing my skin as I step into it like a bed of nails.  The spector of death arises from it like some aggregate mist or the arising of a freed soul from the body of the living.  It's dainty whorling reflects in on itself as some sign of depression.  It's as if it does not want to release itself on the world for fear of it's effects; infectious disease and approaching death
I have found both city and country home and country has stayed with my heart driving me towards a relentless dream since I first felt its homeliness, my awareness of belonging.
The river itself is tendrils of stream surging and darting directionless yet with an unerring purpose.  It moves downhill in varying speeds licking at its banks like a child at the edge of an ice cream cone trying to catch up with it';s dripping, doing so and then settling in for consumption.  So to the water consumes its bearer like a cancer consuming it's host.  Yet death is not the result.  Instead growth and change and the wearing away of something ancient yet fresh as dew drops or baby spiders with their delicate carapace.  The released tendrils of silk to be gathered by the wind and carried to places of belonging where they will build there houses and settle, occasionally swept away by a broom only to experience rebirth somewhere else.  Humans too look for a place to settle, a place called home.  Though they say home is where the heart is, sometimes you reside away frohome and the heart beats fast with passion for the home you long to return to.  A place of sagebrush and dirtmounds and barbed wire and rivers and we seem inconsolable in our quest for this place.  I know I wont settle until I have returned to that though it's distance is not great in human terms I am far from it.  Yet dream and desire are alive like a fish flopping within my hands sparks flying in the sun and life surging through it's body.  All ebony dot and brilliant crimson.  Life at its most basic fighting through a state of survival.  The water that was once bone and death has become a place of grandeur and wonder for its motion and sustinence and life.  With endless purpose it surges neither for nor against but rather beside in accompaniment like the flute and the cello,  the piano and the desperate crooner each word a seperate story of lost love aand fastidious dreams.  CRowds gather and watch as breath becomes song and notes crash and tumble about richocheting off point and billboard makeing a menagerie of a tune of eliptical shape.  The water too sings in cresscendo and vibratto and bass and bosa nova making love to the distance.  Its forever does not seem daunting, rather right and fitting like popcorn strung and hung on a christmas tree only later to be eaten by the cat.
To me there is a dream in every soul winding itself around itself before striking for the top.  It is infected with the venom of love.  Like a passionate embrace there is little known and much hidden yet in honesty with the self we find a multitude of excitement.  For what is our resposibility if not to embrace our own like conservation of a statute that separates the jailed from the free.  Embracing it we find our true self, in honesty and mirth.  It's as if some secret or misnomer has finally been lain to rest and beside it is a river, robust, alive like a beating heart with the conciousness of its path it's main awareness.  Water has been a part of my life since time out of mind.  It bears both the scent of saltiness and the depth of unknown curiousity.  It is as if it make a way despite the struggle as humans are known to do, surgeing and renewing with each passionate molecule of lqiuid.  Liquid is made of much.  It is called dilution where many chemicals and bits of life dissolve within its embrace.    This in a way calls to a deeper question to the constancy of change through growth and death.  As we are absorbed by our lives do we die a little each day or are we merely mixing with it and growing as to be a part, into like a child into new shoes that fit for a short time before a new life experience is found?  Some speak of sorrow and of loss.  I am lucky as my life is as yet unmarred by its decrepitude yet expectation and experience says I may see it, soon if I am lucky and later if fortune is with me.  Yet this desire to write, to unearth the diamond from amongst mere rocks wheat from mere chaffe will be tainted with their displeasure.  Yet rest assured, i like you am assured.  There is goodness out there.  Friendship. LOve.  Beleif.  Hope.  The wellspring from which great things are born.  They all infuse me with a sense of solidity.  Yet some don't, yet amongst them they are mere mortals to divine inspiration, like that rock in comparason to the diamond the chaffe to the wheat.  I have found my purpose..to write, to fish, to love and I do them withe sense that they are built solid in forever.  Like ancient mayan ruins or cave paintings out west, here eternity is based off faith for their creators created them without expectation of their destruction and so to there will was done.  These ideas of solidity leaden my body as strength and confidence take the place of others doubt.  And friendship plas a big part.  You know, the faith in anothers inclination of wellbeing.  Some say that in your twenties you talk and think and in your thirties you bullshit but I realize this is driven off the feeling of hate for another who may beleive wholly unlike another.  There is power to that statement yet it's hate burns out in anger and anger never lasts.  Love lasts.  Some may say it fades but I have kept coddled like a newborn the love of youth holding it till my death bed and beyond into the infinite.  I use her name as a password and our relationship is twenty years old why.  Because of the faith in love that magnificent blessing.  I beleive whether a storm rages outside or it is the softest of spring days.  The joy of a flyrod touches my hand.  Some call it a wand, others a rod, others a stick.  I think in part in a linkage from human to expectation.  The human bolts us to earth as a home made for decisions while expectation lets us soar as eagles to the sky playing on updrafts and tradewinds without direction or worry.  Its as if youth is revisited, a mere copulation of freedom and impulsivity which led to a life one cannot regret.  It's like drug dreams and exstacy influence.  What coursed through my veins was synthesized yet it felt like pure heaven.  It's like being on the edge, living on the edge and seeing death only to step back into a place that consoles you.  Montana was my soarng time, it's rivers my water warmth, it's clouds scuttling in over mountains with glaciel speed shifting and chirning.  Colors infuse that dream with a sense of wonder.  Bricks and schoolbell hallways when all I wanted was a fish, all I wanted was love.  The dynamism of a life spent engaged yet thats only looking back.  It's far from over.  A new religion of words and expansion like the universe as I rise and cut off the sun like an eclipse.  That feeling, of no one being better than you then god and despite the doubt, I believe.  They try to hold you back yet they aren't your brothers, they aren't alive and in that they want you to suffer all the while feel pain.  Well I won't!  My life is full of words and ideas.  Like fish and their world crossing, their struggle.  From home to the sea of Japan and their return.  Some how they seek out their place of origin by smell and magnetics.  Their senses akin to that of god and as humans we are so blind to their experience we can only speculate on it.  A if somehow we can see as they see, feel as they feel.  If only, imagine how rich the world would be.  The scent of youth.  The taste of memory.  The sight of the sun cloaked in frenetic rhythym.  The sound of winder.  The taste of a tree as it brushes against bare arm.  We are so blind yet so aware of ourselfs and our experience.   The pull of a magnetic devil and the chords of a vibratto heaven all in one.  And our abilty to choose to change.  Simple as flipping a lightswitch to stave off darkness.  The warmth of it and the thought of MOntana and suddenly I am enthused.  Water backed by water surrounded by water.  And mountains flanking mountains as sentient beings lording over a prophetic land.  Like that one fish that traveled 30 miles in a fortnight and the understanding of the mechanism behind it.  The thought of all this disimilarity while all things are one and the same in flux and change.  Again glacial yet oh so real.  Wind water sand wearing away rock slowly surely and yet still breaking on that rock find the place of ease.   Its like change though eonic doesn't stop for anyone anything and you can see it as clouds surge across the sky like gangs of wildabeast in heir cyclical adventure searching for green shutes.  Yet the lions lies in wait yet I am the lion .  Lionic in the ind creating and expressing as darkness of days end descends.  Where water moves most often there are fish and fish inspire like no other thing.  The desire, for the search and capture of fish is a permanent picture in my life.  Be it bluegill or bass, trout or the dream of trevally, there is the constant reminder of fishing as my purpose.  There is renewal apon a river, freshness like rebirth but through a form that intuits at mastery.  Sensory perception mixed with a bit of hope equals success and on a river success is measured in fish.  But I challenge that statement.  I think success in fishing is measured in experience as a right of passage that promotes growth.  Each new fish is a new experience teaching about the water through natural thought and activity reproduction.   In a word; learning.  It's  as if implanted with desire the result is growth of the knowledge base and psyche of the engaged being.  Unlike other forms of pleasure, it is active requires resource and research and reposts on a history of great exposure.  Granted life is not all roses.  I have struggled...hard.  From those that have turned on me to a life of bitter duress yet because of and despite it I have become stronger.  That strength bears the weight of honesty and despite the hatred others rain down on the world light is everlasting.  It may be blocked out for a little while it is still shinng somewhere else and will return to shine if I wait for the nights passing.  Some people get caught up  in the fear of the night yet the night itself is what makes one stronger and the light we bathe in reenforces our struggle.  STruggle breeds strength and hate burns out as the wick gradually consumes itself.  The light of love is eternal.  It is the way of centuries and gods holy light which is never extinguished.  Some choose not to beleive yet beyond the faith in ones love is beleif.  Its as if they have succumbed to the dark letting it sway them forever flavoring their life.  Yet from darkness came light, from pain came pleasure from hate came weakness yet the fires of love burn forever..  So gamble on love.  Let it saturate your spirit.  Let it infuse one with the sense that all is well like birth or death or nature or honesty.  They try and orchestrate I create and I beleive in my creation.  Creation thrives on inspiration yet is realized through work.  For the faithless, I hope they find faith.  For those full of hatred, I pray they find love, for those without hope I pray they find hope and in it the ability to create not as they see but as they beleive and hope be it for a person a city a state or the universe, let there hope be met with success and their love be met with reciprocation for in that is the ability to thrive and the love that is missing in their lives.  hope for all be it short tall, black or white, negative or positive hateful or loving, disparaging or supportive. The art in music is evedent.  I have been listening to hip hop since walking through the public gardens at 8 and being exposed to Slick Rick.  At first I was put off by the eloquent slimyness of his words.   The way he spoke about women made me squeamish.  But that was just my first experience and I grew to love that what others night call a fad or violent and threatening.  I didn't and still don't feel that way.  Hip hop is the creation of the citys of america during the late 70's and early eighties.  Some people call it expression but I have a caveat to add to that.  I think it is an expression of a sordid truth of the inner cities.Ther violence was a reality.  It has to be.  When so many people have been disparaged for so long anger will happen and anger begets violence.  If you had weapons pointed at you, if drugs were your only solution to lack of capital, then you will do what you need to do.  The harder the glass ceiling the harder you have to hit to break it.  I have lived on both sides; both the recognition of poverty and the realization of comfort.  In fact right now I'm not sure about my next meal.  And I admit, god forgive me, I have stolen, I have carried a weapon, I have sold drugs.  But never because I wanted to.  WHen you have no food to eat it becomes a matter of survival and I survived.  And I'm not sure I compromised my morals.  Being homeless at 16, you don't have morals you merely follow your influences and find a way to survove.  Survival isn't alway easy but it is from struggle that a strong person is born.  My past is sordid.  From stealing to eat to bumming cigarettes for an escape the depravity of my position built the willful man I am today.  There was a time when there was no light though I did not recognize it becaus eI was to young to.  I remember wearing the same clothes for weeks, of socks so stiff tey could stand up on their own.  I remember skipping puddles in the snow so as a way yo keep my feet dry.  I remember sleeping in backstairwells in the winter just to stay warm.  I remember that.  But that has made me the man, the strong man, I am today and I wouldn't trade it for the world.  That bed me for who I am today.  The doubt and insecurity it fades, its a mist in the wind, evaporating dew.  It is the love and strength i will remember.  They are the powers that have infused my life, they are the feelings I live by.  Granted there are people who will try to snuff out your dreams but they are dreamless themselves and a mere blister to openheart surgery.  Their relevance is negligable.  It is my dream that stays with me.  It iws folded up in my pocket and I have removed it and am unfolding it bit by bit.  It will be the greatness in position I long to assume through work challenge and most of all the strength of the mind.
Water seaps into mt bones occluding all other views the universe may offer.  It is like an opaque peice of material where only the strongest rays of joy shine through.  Eac one augments my perspective on this earth making much from little without overemphasizing the unimportant.  I gues you could say it is a filter for life, a breakwater between the rising tide and the town beside.  There is great hope in fishingl eternal hope in fact.  Why else would you be to quote the author John Gierach "Standing in a River waving a stick.  You are hoping for the success of connectionn between predator and quarry without the messy parts of biting and chewing.  But it has not always been this way.  There have been times when fish stocks have been pushed to the point of survivals balance and sometimes, porbably more often than we think, beyond.  There is somehting to be said for conservation and conservationists.  Many have become involved including companies of great stature.  I think the solution lies in polotics(as in relys on not fibs though thats another story all its own).  My heart relies on love to survive and polotics survives on lovelss banter and I will continue my way until I see fit.  Water moves in a way that evokes the essence of eternity.  Like and endless love or waking up by the one you love in peace, it is a dream yet there is something solid in it like the world surrounding the core of beleif.  That is solid; somehthing to setle on.  Some cannot beleive.  For them I offer cherries and swedish fish till they realize the caring and start to beleive themselves.  I have angled from many banks, from that of the river Blackwater in Ireland to the shores of naples FL USA .  No matter where though frustration can be a pain, hope settles in too.  Like this imbibing force instilled with a sense of victory and at the same time continuity.  Like an adventure that has  never ended but continues on despite light dark, war or peace.  I probably will fish today inspired by not a starlight but a new spot.  I have caught fish there including ones bg enough that I have no control but that is anly part of the adventure.  A immense part os the quest, it's unsurety yet equally confident expectation.  It feeds itself, inspring with success and strengthening through struggle and it si that struggle that makes the fisherman.  In part it si the willingnesss to go the extra mile take those extra casts, change flies with hope.  It is our nature as anglers too hope.  After all new water hold no memory yet we look to create something new that defies odds and logic doing many times what you have never done  It amazes me angler can do such.

Water moves downhill and with ti goes shifting sands.  The sands come from stone worn away from the current.  It is a system in perpetual motion each little peice interacting with each little peice  Yje rocks are lain from glaciers of a million years ago that traversed the landscape thundering and creaking as they inched forward.  Tearing gorge and cutting out bowls later to be filled by springs they were the great earth shifters.  I can imagine at the time great mammooths, wooly and long tusked, thumping and clumping across frozen ice in search of food or other of their desires.  Their long fur matted, a reddish broen, their tusks curving back originally diggin tools now merely marks of age heavy and burdinsome