{"id":18781,"date":"2025-12-11T16:17:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T21:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/?p=18781"},"modified":"2025-12-11T16:17:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T21:17:45","slug":"roads-not-forgotten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/2025\/12\/roads-not-forgotten\/","title":{"rendered":"Roads Not Forgotten"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It feels kinda like coming out. Not from the closet, but from a self-imposed isolation. From my cave, so to speak. Hibernation for self-survival. That’s why I’ve been avoiding it. Coming out, I mean. Maybe I’ll stay here forever.
I haven’t been quiet. I post a lot. Shouting into the void, really. I’m…Just not social.<\/em> In real life, I don’t talk to most of the people I think of as friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Old friends of mine are off, living their lives. Or dying, in a few cases. As a theme, Death is becoming more frequent in my life. So, well I don’t ask about their lives. They don’t ask about mine. We’re both satisfied, living in our memories. I guess. Or maybe we are just scared of hearing bad news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You can ask. It’s ok. No, I’m not dying. Just reflecting. At 63, I’m not ignoring the obvious either. Nothing is forever. Except memories, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you think about it, well, memories are all we have. We each spend our lives collecting them. We cultivate them, in part to understand them. To make us feel better. And it works. Until it doesn’t. I’m pretty sure old friends don’t remember things exactly the same way I do. Details may be blurred. Maybe we don’t remember them at all. Because we each shape our own memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Memories are therefore fleeting and ever changing, blurring the past and future, tainted by the present. It seems as if almost any scenario in the past is now plausible. If someone from back then challenges my current reality by telling me I did something insane that I don’t remember, should I believe them? At this point I would, probably. If it sounds plausible. There were some CRAZY times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the real world, the once unthinkable keeps happening. Again and again. Some days I assume the world must surely be departing it’s axis, and spinning off into the void. Chaos is everywhere, it seems. Plausible? Every scenario seems “plausible” anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not here. Here on the farm, all the chaos spins around me. Here I am frozen in this moment. This place. This magic place, in the middle of nowhere, Upstate NY. Three hours from everywhere, on the border of sanity and oblivion.
I enjoy just being here. I plan to enjoy the peace of this place until my last breath (hopefully not any time soon). I treasure the love and company of my wife, and all of our animals caretakers. We may feed these beasts and birds, but they<\/em> take care of us<\/em>. Our nest will never be empty, though our path and the paths of our loved ones may diverge from our shared journeys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I will forever recall the ones who made a difference in my reality; friends who walked alongside me on my journey to Here. This precarious perch of Reflection. Never forgotten, as we all fade into the future. Together apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not sure we were ever on the same journey. Perhaps our paths crossed for a moment or two in time. But now, time has dragged us each through our own separate battlefields. The minutes we shared have been aggregated into moments. Key scenes and trailers of our lives, rather than the actual footage. Replayed less frequently, as each of our libraries keep growing. Faded, but not erased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what can we do, but journey on, together in our fleeting, ever-archiving memories? If we’re lucky, we may meet again. Maybe this Ride never ends, or maybe one day we’ll travel together around this sun again, for a little while more. But even if the stars explode and the planets all die, the memories of the journeys we shared are forever written into the DNA of the Universe.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I\u2014 I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”<\/em>
~Robert Frost – The Road Not Taken<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It feels kinda like coming out. Not from the closet, but from a self-imposed isolation. From my cave, so to speak. Hibernation for self-survival. That’s why I’ve been avoiding it. Coming out, I mean. Maybe I’ll stay here forever.I haven’t been quiet. I post a lot. Shouting into the void, really. I’m…Just not social. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[582,565,561,606,587,777],"tags":[96,602,562,607,594,779,584,780,523],"class_list":["post-18781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-blog-2","category-jamiegray","category-jfs","category-justthinking","category-moregray","category-upstateny","tag-jamiegray","tag-jamiegrayofficial","tag-jfs","tag-justthinking","tag-moregray","tag-newyork","tag-personal","tag-upstateny","tag-blog","post_format-post-format-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":18424,"url":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/2022\/04\/introspective-thought-of-the-day\/","url_meta":{"origin":18781,"position":0},"title":"Introspective Thought of the Day","date":"April 3, 2022","format":"image","excerpt":"I think I spent a lot of time trying to be the best version of myself that I could be, rather than just being myself. ~jg #justthinking #deepthought #whatever Meet Jack, the Big Black Cock (Jersey Giant we think). Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "#jamiegray"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/20220402_1751084079028598600468561-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18487,"url":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/2022\/10\/two-kinds-of-people\/","url_meta":{"origin":18781,"position":1},"title":"Two Kinds of People…","date":"October 8, 2022","format":"image","excerpt":"There are only two kinds of people in this world: People who want to live their lives by their own rules People who want to tell others how to live If you're in the second group, kindly go fuck yourselves with a fire hose. ~jg Authors Note: All opinions expressed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "#blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/20220413_174433.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18533,"url":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/2023\/02\/classified-documents\/","url_meta":{"origin":18781,"position":2},"title":"Classified Documents","date":"February 15, 2023","format":"image","excerpt":"Here's what I don't get: Why isn't there a check-out, check-in system for these documents? Would it be so hard? Give each one a bar code. Scan it out with your ID. Scan it back in when you return it. I mean, if you check out a copy of Mark\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "#blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/comica16030368521642325026924357813562.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18434,"url":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/2022\/04\/thinking-about-thinking\/","url_meta":{"origin":18781,"position":3},"title":"Thinking About Thinking","date":"April 26, 2022","format":"image","excerpt":"I would never want to tell you what to think, any more than try to tell you what to do. What to eat. What to buy. Who to Fuck. These are your decisions, not mine. You don\u2019t even have to think at all, for fuck\u2019s sake. Living your best life\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "#Animals"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/20220426_144002.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18393,"url":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/2022\/02\/bald-eagle-for-thanksgiving\/","url_meta":{"origin":18781,"position":4},"title":"Bald Eagle for Thanksgiving?","date":"February 27, 2022","format":"image","excerpt":"If Ben Franklin had his way, we'd be eating the national bird ? every Thanksgiving. Or maybe we'd eat bald eagle, because Turkeys would be a protected symbol of America's deliciousness? #YouTellMe ~jg America\u2019s love-hate relationship with the bald eagle https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2022\/03\/bald-eagle-america-history-jack-e-davis\/621311\/ The Bald Eagle is protected in the US, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "#blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/1645998614221.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18481,"url":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/2022\/08\/this-month-so-far\/","url_meta":{"origin":18781,"position":5},"title":"This month so far…","date":"August 18, 2022","format":"image","excerpt":"","rel":"","context":"In "#blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/wp_story1660843740304_0.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18781"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18784,"href":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18781\/revisions\/18784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamiegraymusic.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}