Omnia tempus habent et suis spatiis transeunt universa sub cælo
When the change of seasons came at the end of summer, it hit me rather hard. Harder than it ever has in recent memory. And whilst this is probably due to a number of reasons, the one I can think of as having the most to do with it is air conditioning. You see, last winter, my previous car – a 1999 Honda Civic – was destroyed in a car accident that was not my fault. But the accident itself was so curiously crafted by fate that had any officer seen the results thereof (a smashed hood on my car and a scraped bumper on hers) he would immediately have assigned fault to me. So the woman who had charged across three lanes of traffic at a forty-five degree angle saw that she had perhaps done something wrong and agreed to let me pay her the small sum of money to cover the minor repairs on her bumper in lieu of waiting for a policeman to arrive. Incidentally, as fate would also have it, she worked across the street from me, and so gave me a ride to my office and I had the car towed to my mechanic. My mechanic is one of those guys who almost always can make something work for very little money. His invoice totals are always lower than his estimates, and he is known as one of the few completely honest mechanics in town. He runs a tight ship; his reputation is pristine. My throat dropped into my stomach when I heard him hesitate and then calmly tell me in his deep, southern voice, “David, it’s ugly.” These are not the kind of words that Billy normally said. And if he did, things were bad. So I sold him the car for $450 for salvage and went to buy a new car of my own. And since I was not going to be getting an insurance cheque for this, the new car would have to come completely out of our savings. Not wanting to spend any more than I absolutely had to, I jumped on Craig’s List and sought out the lowest of the low-cost, early-model cars. Finally, I stumbled upon a perfect beauty: the quintessential model for A‑B transportation. Nothing could outdo this car in sheer simplicity. The ride was a 1987 Honda CRX, owned and tweaked for an entire year by a Kampuchean mechanic-to-be who was a good bit younger than the car itself. It had no radio, no rear wiper, no back seats, and most importantly, no air conditioning. None of that bothered me though because this car drove. And man, did it drive. The kid who owned it had turned this little machine into a low-flying hot-rod, and as far as I could tell, this car was a dream come true. So inasmuch as it was the beginning of a new era, it was just as much the end of the old. No more radio. No more CDs in the car. No more smooth rides with cruise control. And no more A/C. Throughout the rest of the winter and springtime, this posed no problem, but when summer came upon us, my tune changed a little. I did not mind the lack of music. I used the time driving to think or to pray. The switch back to a 5-speed was a welcome change as well: you know, feeling more connected to the road and all. The lack of air conditioning had me squirming for a bit, though. But it did not take long before my body was acclimated to the new weather patterns. I rode everywhere with my windows down, and the sunroof open. I buzzed all my hair off, and left work with my gym clothes already on so that I would not dirty my office clothes. And after a while, I started to enjoy the summertime. No matter how early I left in the morning, the air was always humid and warm. Even leaving the house at six with the sun still down, still the air was still warm when I would leave. I got used to this, and planned for it. Indeed, it had become a part of my internal programming. And then it happened. It was not just sooner than I expected, it was also more dramatic. I gathered my lunch, my gym bag, stepped over to the door, blessed myself with holy water, and opened the door and stepped into the black morning. And I shivered. After four months of warm mornings with short-sleeved shirts, I did not ever give a thought that maybe summer might come to an end. But it did. It ended, and it ended fast. Being of strong European stock, I actually enjoy cooler weather more than I enjoy warmer weather. But I was not upset by the cool air on my face; I was shocked into the realisation that the summer was over, and the change of season, whilst being more than welcome in terms of temperature, brought me face-to-face with my own mortality. I am now thirty years of age, which means that if I am fortunate, in ten years my life will be more than half-way over. Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today And then one day you find ten years have got behind you No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun Ten years ago, I was driving around Atlanta with my friends watching movies, studying all through the wee hours of the morning at Waffle House, going to shows, trying to make it through advanced math, and most importantly, trying to figure out the best ways to purchase and store up large quantities of cigarettes and alcohol. I blink my eyes and suddenly I am married with five children, eight years engineering experience, and I am a Catholic. Does anybody care to tell me what happened? I am afraid that when I blink again, my children will all be married, I will be trying to get my pension payments, and I will still be stubbornly avoiding the doctor. A new season is here. The old one has ended. So too my season here with this blog is ended. Xanga was kind of a cool place, for a little while. I have made many friends here. I love all the people with whom I interact here. I am thankful to God for the wonderful relationships I now have thanks to this little site. I think specifically of all my Catholic friends who have come here and have helped me defend the faith, my Protestant brothers with whom I have shared so many good discussions, and even those Orthodox people that continue to confound me. For a while, Xanga was it. You had Paleocrat and Konfederado (Mr_Orthodox! ha, those were the days!), Kriegerwulff and Daveyh8, Br. Dominic and Ebrulf, Servitus, mister_jargon and on_bleeker_street, vanwedgeworth, dasack, katieluther, tskerritt, anselm_the_presbyterian, and others. There was a time when this place was magical. I am tempted to quote Hunter Thompson, but I will not. Wait, yes I will. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right–that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense–we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest of a high, and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west. And with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the highwater mark--that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back. – Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Xanga truly was a magical place and as much as it pains me to say it, the magic is gone. Xanga has spent so much time trying to make itself like a ghastly hybrid of Facebook, Myspace, and Blogspot, and frankly I just want a place to write. So I have found a new place for myself at davehodges.wordpress.com. Things will not be any different there; I still intend to write sporadically if I write at all. And I hope to stay in touch with many of you in the mean time. But the endless internet discussions are over. And I cannot stay here any longer. It just is not the same here any more, and I think the exodus that many of you have taken already is both the cause and effect of this loss of magic. For all of those that left positive feedback and encouraged me to keep writing even when I thought it was a lost cause, I thank you. For all of those who left negative feedback and encouraged me to keep writing even when it was a lost cause, I thank you. And for all of you seekers who wanted nothing more than an explanation of what I believe, thank you for the interest. To all who are reading this now, you are mortal. You will die one day. And what matters after you are dead is not how much money you made, what kind of house you lived in, nor who liked you the most. What will matter is the state of your soul, and how you spent the years that God gave you. Ask yourself frequently, “Is what I am doing now helping me along my pathway to salvation, or hindering me?” Times and seasons come and go, and your life is but a vapour of air, it is gone as soon as it starts. I hope this thought stays with you as I leave here, and I hope that it goes with me wherever I go. For those of you who knew me when this blog started, you know what I mean when I say, “What a long strange trip it’s been.” Stay the course, keep the faith, and last but not least, Happy Truckin’. Dave Hodges | 
