Old grapes lay forgotten in the kitchen on top of the trash. Uneaten and still. The grapes of wrath by which God says he will bloody the earth someday, remind me a man can get nowhere except to the end. There’s no code to crack, there’s no pot of gold currently left undiscovered. There’s only God, enthroned above, robed, and holy. And there’s only creation below, small, searching, and, sometimes, finding a worthy nugget that brightens his countenance momentarily.

A man has nothing besides who he is and time, left over, spoils before it’s pressed into meaning, shaped into its purpose, and drunk down. Waste happens in fictitious attitudes of excess. Except in our minds, there’s no real extra. Excessive life, wasted on leisure, pleasure, and wanton desire lead a man, not to be full, but recklessly empty. I just need more, he says. A little more and I’ll be complete.

A man wasting away, thinking he’s spending his life admirably is a great tragedy long plaguing humanity that each new man can’t seem to help but live over and over again. Every generation, thinking they have the key to unlocking man’s progress, discards the past, but, by vainly elevating themselves, only repeat all that’s already been done. There’s no code to crack, only a God to know.

What did he waste besides himself thinking he could become something more than he is? A bag of bones, and considering he may become a god, or, at least, as important as one, he is full throttle into the wasteland of many men before him, and their forgotten graves lay silently, littering the hillsides, and mean nothing. All on his own then, a man’s real food (the truth about where he’s going) remains uneaten. Spoiling and still. Pruning.

Although home is man’s inevitable destination, it becomes his greatest fight and a, rather, pathetic scratch at immortality. That man is in charge of so little is very difficult for him to admit. Death is what he fights because, since he was big enough to tie his shoes, he wanted to tie the world up and take it for his own. To have completely instead of being known completely is man’s greatest error since the beginning of time.

In false hope of advancement, waste resounds. Piles of wasted years going one direction, then the next, finally another, and, last, resigning himself only to pleasure. Many men, not eating their sour grapes, become to resent life altogether. The end will come, but they’re already planning to not face things courageously. They’ll turn away from death and resist, instead of embracing and fulfilling.

By failing to admit that time is never on their side, men neglect facing what’s necessary in favor of attempting to devour it all. There’s always more, so why waste time on the senseless, the trivial, and the unseen? Why spend time with God, alone, when I can be out, visible, and, thus, progressing in some measurable way?

Excess is a mindset only available to men who aren’t sure where they’re going, or who would rather not admit that from the moment they’re born, are dying. In this way, a man would rather make his mark on time instead of allowing time to make its mark on him. A man not marked you know by his mind never being still, a perpetual restlessness which seasons every conversation, cloaked as motivation.

To live marked, to never throw away a moment in favor for another, is a man that leaves behind more than just waste. And becomes more than God’s wrath. For, before he sees the blood with his own eyes, a man feels the wretched twist from within, that is: the longer I postpone the truth of this life, the more I am pained by it. And, so, these grapes, always feeling more like poison instead of life everlasting, will, most often, always be forgotten.