I haven’t written in well over a year. There have been no words. I have been able to express better with color. I have explored painting more and for whatever reason the colors soothe me. For someone who is an avid pencil and charcoal sketcher, a lover of the color black, every tattoo and favorite piece of clothing being black, the fact that I’ve been so drawn to color is odd. Perhaps, it is God, showing me the light through my own work. Who knows? So much has changed.

I cant even express what the last year and some months has looked like to my life, my heart. Such great loss. So much learning. So much grieving, mourning, soul searching, and exploring. I am finally coming to a point where the words are coming back. I’m literally finding my voice again. But the words are different. The emotions different. The questions different. But still distinctly me. It is an odd feeling to not even recognize the person looking back at you from the mirror.

I recently had the opportunity to go tour some fossil beds, wind caves and museums from the Ice Age to the great American fur trade. I have always had a strong draw to history of all kinds, but especially American, and the Ice Age. I feel sometimes when I look at history, when it’s right in front of me…. That I have been there before. It seems so familiar. It seems as though I know what things are before I am told or read the plaques and that things that have no explanation, I somehow feel I know the answer.

I think as humans, most of us with any awakening, are drawn to the past. I think it’s human nature. We want to know who “they” were, as bad as they wanted to be remembered. What is it about this piece of human consciousness that drives us to leave a mark for anyone who might come after us? What is it about us, that makes us want to find out why they did? It seems to me that perhaps, it is the deep need to know it is not all in vein. This life, this human condition is wildly painful. The loss, pain, heartbreaks. What is the point of it all?

Perhaps, the need to put our hand print on a cave wall, is to shout to the world “I was here”, and that somehow, that mattered. That someone, one day, will see it, as say “Someone was here. They tried to tell me something. They had thought, feeling, a message.” The forever struggle for the human heart to be seen.

My draw to these peoples is real. I don’t just find it interesting, as most do. I feel an empathy toward them. I feel their pains and struggles. Or at least, I think I do. And sometimes it begs the question in my mind, of reincarnation. That feeling, when I look at these dwellings, see these prehistoric animals’ bones, feel the coldness of the caves…see hand prints on the walls, that I have been here before. I have searched for another explanation for the feeling, believe me. As the idea is not really something I readily believe. But the feeling is so strong, it begs the question.

Many people feel they were born in the wrong time. Especially people naturally drawn to agriculture, hunting, camping, and especially horses. It is a common theme among many. Saying they should have been born in the time of the cowboy, or mountain man, or Native Americans. I hear it all the time. Perhaps its not a longing for what “should have been”, but more a memory of “what was”? It is fact, that energy is constant. It may take other forms but it never ceases to exist. Regardless of faith, it is people who do not believe in life after death who are missing the facts. Once in existence, you cannot un-exist. Is it truly that far fetched a thought to think that perhaps you’ve been here before? That people are drawn to certain places or cultures, because perhaps, it is not fascination, but a memory? It is an incredible struggle I have never given much voice to for fear of sounding crazy, but I generally am not taken very seriously anyway.

I believe, in my deepest heart, that perhaps my hand is on one of those walls, from a me that existed so long ago. And it is incredibly hard to understand, and it is a battle I face with my faith as a Christian. But I cannot deny the familiarity, the power, the struggle, the longing, to be “home” again. It is becoming more apparent to me, especially after seeing these great museums and fossil beds up close, that there is a reason I have always longed for a home I could not find. It would make sense that I will never find it, because it simply does not exist anymore. It is thousands of years gone, buried in ice and snow… and memories.