I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do

You love something, but still you shuffle along with your life. You wander a little here, hang out a little there. You kinda lose track of time as you race through your life at a leisurely pace. There becomes a separation. A separation of miles compounded by a separation of time. Your passions invariably take on the patina of time, coloring once bright memories with the greens and bleached whites of distant fondness. You are gone and you won't be back. You didn't even know it.

I strolled old Mobile last night. I soaked in the quiet charm, wrapping myself in it like an old, soft favorite sweatshirt. As the evening moved from the defiant, blinding last rays of a setting sun, through the dusk and into the nighttime proper, I embrace the rightness of the moment. The pleasure took the edge off of, but could not overpower, the ache that settled over me. It is not by birth that I am a child of the Gulf Coast. But I am that son.

My meanderings took me past reminders of days gone by. Times that were more genteel. A neon rimmed sign offering fine furniture and cheerful credit. The brick buildings, wearing their time passed as worn corners and faded colors. The parks. The giant oaks, their branches holding out the spanish moss to dance gently in the breezes that blew softly and randomly off from the bay. And I ached. It was an ache of finally returning home and knowing you could not stay.

The gulf coast pulses from music. It is not performed, it is the life blood of the land. I passed a storefront as I walked. I could tell that the building had been converted, though if there had ever been a sign, it was long since removed. There were posters plastered every which way, tattooing the windows as colorfully as the ones on any drunken seaman who had passed by, intent on making the dives and juke joints just a few blocks on. The posters were for bands, some local, some national, that called the stage their home on rowdy, smokey Saturday nights. Tonight there were young people spilling out, leaning up against the wall, sprawled out on the old couch brought onto the sidewalk, and clustering on the curb, smoking and talking. There was a time when I too could just be. Just be in the moment. No worries about what should be. Or could be. Just living for the night. This night. I don't believe time makes you old. But it does steal your youth.

I stared at the names on the posters. Drive By Truckers. Southern Culture on the Skids. North Mississippi All Stars. And on and on. Just reading the names I could feel the funk and the stomp, washing over the crowd in hot and humid waves, and wafting out the door to drift slowly off into the warm night air. No, the people of the coast don't just do music. Music lives in them. Does the music live in me? I think it wants to. But Tampa's gulf coast is not that of the south. Geographically speaking it is. But it does not have the tradition, the memories, the drawl.... it doesn't have the soul. It doesn't have that certian crawfish mentality. When I left Mississippi the last time, I didn't know it was the last time. But it was. The music calls me, but the voices are faint. And I ache.

A life well lived will still contain regrets, out

Ramblin' Ed