Dreary days forge a gloomy mind...the sun doesn't shine so bright, inside my head. But all is well this time. This time.
And the rain still pours, and I cannot decide why it is I haven't peace of mind--though all in all feels quite still.
But stillness does not equal peace, as many have found before me.
Perhaps a piece of me wonders, if the sky must cry, then shouldn't I?
This indecisiveness is debilitating.
But there is something....something that won't quit gnawing..won't leave me be in this equilibrium.
Something tells me, that something is not right--
is not wrong, but--rather--not there.
I'm not content. Not that I should be, or that anybody really should be...but there is such a weight threatening to tip me over...trying to hint, to push me in a direction. But every time I squint and try to see the distance the mirage fades and the desert stretches for miles.
It's that destination I know is there, but I cannot determine how far, or whether it is the place of my dreams, or of my nightmares.
What do I do. What do I do...What do I do?

Guidance doesn't exist--in the land beyond the clouds.

I have had the strangest dreams--I have found some peace of mind:
it has stopped turning for now.
I have found a level of contentment that hasn't existed for me in a while.
I notice little things like the curve of my shoe against the floor, and the dust on my sweater--I watch the wind blow the drapes across the way, and for once it doesn't worry me about the day--but introduces me to how the cotton flies in the draft.
I dreamed last night of a place far away--a place that I belong. I dreamed of the journey to get there and the many obstacles in the way--
and how wonderful it would be to get there. Not because of the place, I realized, but because of the people who are there.
I have a sense of impending excitement...something is about to happen--something wonderful, and complex--
something that will change everything I know about myself, and everybody else.
It came upon me yesterday as I rested under a tree in the park. A loud separatist rally writhed up the hill above me; children played dodge ball in the sun. And I laid against my tree surrounded by life and beauty and diversity.
But it wasn't the moment that allowed this feeling--it was the calmness that allowed me to perceive it. Apprehension, brevity, adventure: something lingering just around the bend in this overgrown, forest trail (think Frost, The Road Not Taken).
I don't want to sleep anymore. I want to wake up and see what I've been missing--I gather this is a lot.
I am often overcome by an urge to sell all of my belongings and move to Brazil. My rationale tells me this is a bad idea, but it is this impulsiveness that intrigues me...perhaps a less drastic impulse, I should follow.
I think what I feel is the return of my cravings for adventure. Last time it brought me to Montreal, before that the French Alps, Prague, Vienna, Rotterdam...I need to loose these shackles and roam--
not in discovery, but in acquiescence. In an understanding of the dichotomy that exists within myself--
I'm like the existentialist tripper who took a wrong turn and ended up on Mulholland Drive, for a little while. Who finally found her own feet again, one shoestring at a time, and began to pull herself together--pull herself back toward the part of her that had fallen by the wayside on the slippery streets of superficiality.
There is a piece of everyone before me, left within me--it's frightening to think of all these destinies to fulfill...so many things to do, to try--I feel them all pulling at me, little urges: different ones each day.
I want to be it all, and so I have been nothing.
Today the sun is shining, though I can only see it reflected on the windows across the alley-way--I know it is there. Today I ride my broken bicycle (again) to the shop, where I hope they will fix it for me, or give me a better one. Today I am making one effort above all others.
A curious man from Trinidad taught me yoga yesterday. He spoke of committing actions without any expectations--of not wanting reactions, but simply doing things because we want to do them, or because they are nice to do for others.
What a feat! Human nature--through our societal disconnect--is to expect something in return, always.
My roomate just woke up. He has his own demons--often they pollute the air in the apartment, scrambling for attention. I can feel his unrest...I hope he finds peace.
This isn't even a stream of consciousness, because my consciousness keeps shifting--rather it is an evolution of thought...a journey through the morning, fueled by coffee and complexity of desire.
It is time to go forward in my day.
It is time to find out just where I might be going.

The dichotomy of the living: the field notes of the dead.
One whispered to another, why are we dressed in red?
A painted pretty picture; a paradox of lies--one slipped beneath another:
concentrated in the eyes.
The tale of tales, a storybook told--one villain to the next;
there is no life, or love: is lost--
there is no glory, that's the cost.

("The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings.")

I should be sleeping. Instead, I am awake wondering about things I can't control. The first of which, is you.
Stuck in a limbo-hold between love and hate:
I feel neither.
I don't know how you'll react, if you'll react. And maybe this is the problem.

Remember me? That little glimmer of something you saw some-time ago...sitting in an alcove, all pretty-like, or so you said. I was the one that got away--from everybody else, and yet you still managed to hold on, long enough to keep me ensnared. So what now?
Have you forgotten already? So soon after those empty promises that shattered on some cheap linoleum floor--not mine.
Your mouth says you remember, but that is all. And every day your whisper is a little bit quieter--though I wonder if it's me that's moving away.
I don't believe you. Not anything you say. If it is true, I marvel at it's veracity, then caste it aside. If it is false, I only wonder at how you think I couldn't know...
I remember a feeling, a nice one, from such a while ago...some time when my smile was real and yours wasn't so far off...some time when laughing was my favourite pastime--though I wonder if that too was as real as it felt.
Where has the world gone? In all its swept up glory--those rainy day promises kept in a jar while the desert took its toll.
Did anybody hear the glass break when we smashed it on the tile and ran for the coast...did anybody step on the shards when they were looking for our remains, now sodden in the dampening dark--
go home, somebody yells over the sound of the waves crashing on the beach--I am, at least in my mind, from time to time.
But you...you don't unravel like the rest. You play games with our heads--we're just pieces on the checkerboard (nobody likes chess)...and maybe you're right.
But every once in a while, it probably wouldn't destroy the odds to think that today, in this battle of where we are going in love lost or unfound--
perhaps, you are wrong.

and I have been trying ever so slightly to come across a specific passage in Tropic of Cancer, but as much as I hope to see it with my own eyes--because indeed I know it is there--it simply won't present. I spend my days scouring the pages, in chronological order growing closer to the end, or at least the end of this one...and nothing. And I don't want to admit that it might be what I am looking for--because that is a secret.
Henry Miller's stream of consciousness reminds me of the things I have heard about James Joyce--about his stream-of-consciousness writing style that leads sentences into paragraphs into full chapters, never pausing for a minute to punctuate, and take a break.
I wonder why these things cause me to react in a similar way--why reading someone else's train of thought from one hundred or more years ago changes my own from punctuated and concise to rambling, thought provoking (even), bumbling, un-ordered, un-conjugated muttering of somethings...but nothing as decisive as a stream of consciousness..nothing that actually takes me anywhere except further in to my own head.
But I no longer want to blame Miller or Joyce because thinking back, I've always thought like this--only, I have always tried harder to disguise it...to change the way the words come out, from the way they existed in the first place.
Words. They mean nothing until we tack meaning on to them...they are empty vessels that we restock like freight container ships--letting them empty and lose their meaning and then rebuilding and filling them with new connotations..annotations. denotations? Words are just sounds we've learned to make with our mouths and tongues and breath and voices...words are meaningless, were meaningless until we learned meaning in itself. Then we were able to attach distinct meanings to distinct sounds--words came about. We created them; this means we can also destroy them, will destroy them.
And what might come after words? When we have exhausted, torn, twisted and pilaged them...what then? We'll have no more use for them--they'll be tossed out the window (if we have those anymore) like an old pair of socks. Perhaps, we will even cease to communicate at all.
I don't believe in the space age.
It seems like such a fabrication from such a small and idealistic group of people...people who would have to convince so many more people that any of this could be possible, and more than that, useful.
I think instead we should regress.
Progress could still be regression--that is, perhaps going back to the beginnings of things might be a better act of moving forward than moving forward itself--the moving forward we mean when we talk of moving forward.
Speaking of moving--here, for now, for today and this day--I am done. I am moving on.

This isn't about metaphors and similes. It isn't about assumptions or misconceptions (though there have been many of those). This is about trust. It is about evolution and regression. It is about human nature, and the fundamental basics of human nurture.
Why is it that we feel such an intrinsic need to violate the terms of our personal relationships?
Why do we never face the people we must with the facts? Why do we sensitize and detract to one person and embellish and vindicate to another?
Why do some of us choose to believe the worst in others, no matter how hard they might be trying to disprove us? And why do some of us refuse to see the malice in people no matter how present it might be?
These aren't just my questions, but I am asking them now. Why now...Why?
(A why? doesn't always illicit a because.)
I'm asking because certain realizations have plummeted these questions into the forefront of my thoughts, and I can't get away from them even when I try. I will wonder about these things forever. I wonder about them now.
I sat on a bronze lion today--at the foot of the monument in Montreal. If you have been to Montreal, you know what I am talking about. If not, think Trafalgar Square. If you haven't been to London--
why the fuck are you sitting at a computer reading this nonsensical discourse?
Go do something. Fuck off and do something.

The truth is...spiteful.
The truth is also, that the only people who can really hurt you are those you love (sic: and respect) most. And what does it mean when the hurt is inadvertent? If the hurt comes from a third party...if the person who curdles your skin with their words does so to another and it unintentionally comes your way? Is it worse? Because the things they say carry more truth? and weight? Is is better because you know at least that those things they say are their worst, because they never did say them to you?

Maybe I'm the marionette. Maybe my strings fall to the wayside, when nobody is watching. Maybe nobody knows, because they only see the chic-cherry smiles and the overdone eyes. Maybe I'm so good at faking it, I've forgotten what it feels like to be real.

I'm suffocating in a box. It's locked on all four sides--
as long as I'm in here, I'll never be happy--
as long as it's locked--
I'll never get out.

She reminds me of a marionette. Her strings are taut, she looks impenetrable. But when they loosen she falls apart into a hundred separate fragments--
confused.
When the world is around to pull her together, she is beautiful. When they turn their backs, she is a mess--
all string tangled with string and piece upon piece of contorted confusion. Her disparity is overwhelming, she knows she isn't perfection when she is simply herself. So each new day she tightens her strings to welcome the crowd from her throne. They beckon and wave and praise her shell--
the beauty she projects over them. And not one of them questions her. Nobody asks whether she is happy at night when the crowds have gone home. Not a single soul wants to know if she's anything more than that pretty face that smiles so selflessly down upon them.
She'd cry herself to sleep, but she doesn't see the point. The eyes have to open each morning and put on the same show, week upon week. Month upon month. She never falters, but holds her own, in the loneliest place she will ever know.

(to be continued...)

Little paper shacks--
make up this world (of mine). They dot the horizon like pebbles on a beach--
somewhere far away--
from here.

Doesn't anyone live in them? Somebody wants to know...they're empty.
Vacant lots, as they swivel in the wind--doors open,
if you look closely enough.

But isn't that just
what we never do?

Glance as we pass
by the window-sill--
looking at the pretty things,
only.

Pretty things-
like love and flowers;
like laughter and snowflakes--
pure things. Simple things. Those that want naught but to give in, giving--
those that demand nothing,
but what they incur.

Falsify the obvious.

Pretty things aren't pretty when you look at them like we do:
love leaves one lost, and roses have thorns--
laughter covers the pain, as snowflakes dust over the rusty muddle of winter.

The underside of it all.

Careful, a little smurf whispered--
fix the cracks so the rain doesn't get in.

It was stormy out--that's true,
but it leaves one there to wonder whether she meant the rain that lashed the sides of that tiny hut as it hugged the edge of the sea-swept cliff--
or if, in fact, she spoke with intended eloquence of a more proverbial type of rain.

Either way, it began a journey into unexplored territory--
that of the vicious and tragic night that was to follow,
and an internal exploration of sorts that revealed far more than I think either of us, to this day, would care to admit.

In binding the sides of that hut closed to brave the elements,
we unintentionally bound pieces of ourselves--
figment upon figment, creating a connection of sorts that doesn't warrant much explanation--
but exists nonetheless.
Later we lay in a heap under moth eaten blankets and listened to the cacophonous symphony that played above our heads--
careful not to let go, completely.

And when the sun rose some hours later,
and the clouds parted above the white-capped waves
a tiny dart of sunlight nibbled its way through the window and rested on the mass-like lump that was us.

While the morning held its breath,
I listened carefully for her delicate wisdom,
but she'd gone like the storm--
leaving behind the walls we'd bound so tightly against the rain.

It's like we've all forgotten that everyone else has a soul, too.
Like the entire world has suddenly become so monochromatic that all we know is our internal dialogue--the things we feel and the reasons we do things for--but we're all overlooking that small detail that everyone else has this inner narrator as well.
The ignorance-is-bliss people forgot to mention that we aren't all ignorant--and so one man's bliss may be another's ultimate irritation, or worse...
I spent a month in a rabbit hole--
only to come out and see that everyone else was still in theirs--
like Wiarton Willie, who died two days before Groundhog day, ten years ago...
Instead of pronouncing his death and finding a replacement [surely there are other groundhogs],
they found an old stuffed groundhog [because the latter had visibly begun to decompose], dressed him in a tuxedo, laid him in a coffin and put him on display to ten thousand squealing eight year-olds--who very quickly realized that Wiarton Willie was more stuffed cotton and coin-eyes, than psychic ground-animal...
Who cares? I dare you to ask--
because we all think the rest of the world is oblivious--
we all think that our actions are either futile and unnoticed, or over the heads of the highest reaching top-hats...
we think we're invincible--
to others, to our lives..to our deaths--
we're not. We're visible;
in every sore facet of being--everyone can see--through us, over us,
and in the worst cases--into us.

Everybody has an expiration date--
sore thumbs, they stick out of shirt collars parading up the street;
if we're all so different--if there is such a hierarchy of being,
then why do we all die?
Get over yourselves! I'd like to tell you all--
but then I'd have to get over myself too..
and I'm just not willing to do that, yet.

...and what do you do to remedy that unequivocal feeling that you are dispensable?
when the entire world has forgotten you--and you don't care, because the people that really matter--those that are intrinsic to your sense of self, they haven't--
but then they do..
and you're left in a void of neither here nor there, and completely, utterly and entirely alone..
all those things you'd thought they'd meant,
all those things that seemed so real in so many moments that passed--
they all became arbitrary in that second when everything disintegrated and left you cold..
and though you shiver in the dark and search blindly for a hand to grasp onto--
and though you hope that a warm touch will reach out and pull you back,
it never comes.
...you're left to wander the cliff edges of pitch-noir, scrambling on mountain sides,
hoping not to fall into the abyss that waits so patiently for your return--
you've been here before--
but not for many years, and all those memories you'd thought you'd left in this darkness..they've all been waiting for you--
and now here, on your own, they emerge from the darkest shadows and welcome you back
with shrill cries and archaic rage--
these terrifying nightmares that dominated everything you knew up until you said goodbye--
up until you were welcomed into sun-light with rose petals polka-dotting your 'i's...
and the world had opened its eyes and seen you in an instant--
everything folded up like origami and fit perfectly into a package labelled, 'me'.
...they all made you feel like you'd come home--
like those years of blackened torture had all been some silly nightmare that was now over--
and had never been as bad as you'd imagined.
..and you believed them..you believed everything they said because in those moments it had all seemed so distant--
so now, back where you started all those years ago,
you wonder--
was there ever a time when there was neither sunshine nor pitch-noir?
when life just flowed, because it could--
when neither the world and its lies nor the deepest black and its nightmares dominated your dementia,
when all that you knew made sense--
simply because that's how it was supposed to be.

Moon-nights turn wayward dawns into dusk.

The grass settles as we wind our way down the valley;
foxgloves tilt--
the night is clear as any,
and we find ourselves gazing skyward
hoping to catch a glimpse
of the shadows we left behind--
there aren't any.

Long ago we made a promise--
a promise carried through by particles of dust that cling to us
like silver lining on a cloud.
They belonged to others before us,
from times before any of this existed.

The mountains grow as we follow the path blindly,
ever deeper into the darkness.
Where the moon once lit our way,
we only see its shadows,
cast on the craggy skyline that moves farther and farther out of reach.

We aren't looking back.
When we decided to leave so many years ago, now,
we promised we would never return--
would never turn around, even,
and wave goodbye.

There wasn't anybody left to wave to--
anyways.

Every now and then, you glance in my direction--
I don't look at you.
I sit still, stoned on silence.
There isn't anything to say,
as the night grows blacker than black and the mountains no longer stand out from the sky.

The old home we left behind,
where magic hid under the bedpost and night terrors turned tricks on the heather--
it lost love when the fires raged.
We lost too, but we never stopped to ask if the love that was wasted could grow again on its own.

We left as the smoke reached the horizon--
we left while the bed posts blazed and the hills grew more effervescent in the fire-lit glow.

We left, one day,
and vowed as one does--
never to return.
And vowed as one does--
never to look behind us.

Today is different. Somehow. What happened. What changed. Did the rain fall differently this morning than it has on any other. Or not. Did the sun find a mirror in the apartment across the way--that never seems to catch the sun. Did a cloud cover the ground, instead of the sky it usually grazes. Did a child wake up with no sound in his throat. Was the moon still in sight for us to see. What pinched my consciousness and rustled a dream. What dredged up things that have lain dormant for so many years. What didn't let them lie, anymore. What silver of light caught my eye this early morning and pulled me back to this.

There's a lovely little thing with a Glaswegian accent and a stare that's lost on the world around her--she's blind. But that doesn't stop her from smiling out the window at the land that whizzes by, and curling in gently to the man beside her who holds her as one might hold a paper lily before placing it on the breeze.
They're going South--not South as in England, South as in Morocco. They told me over dinner last night. Right now we're somewhere in the Basque region--oh yes this train likes to dilly-dally it's way across the continent, there's no sense, you see, in going anywhere in a hurry. You'll undoubtedly be too late for what ever just happened and far too early for what ever is to come.
They made the decision two weeks ago to leave this old country and head for a land where what you see is so little of what you experience...not to say that Northern Africa can't offer spectacular sights, but the sounds and the smells are so rich and inviting...the things you see are less relevant. And when one is blind it becomes ever so important to entertain the other senses.
She hasn't always been blind, you know...
Oh the conversations we have are marvelous, we speak of rich dreams and evocative nightmares. The little girl tells me what she sees, because it isn't black, you know, when you close your eyes. She makes her own worlds now and gives a new name to each shape she remembers. The man listens quietly and keeps her close to him. He says a word from time to time, but he lets her do most of the talking, and to be honest it's her that I most want to listen to. Somewhere between Basque and Barcelona we stop to stretch our legs and she smells the desert of the Spanish plateau. She doesn't know whether to laugh or weep; the vastness of the desert is terrifying, it smells like death, but it is so open it pulls you in and you almost forget you can't survive on your own.
We avoid big cities because they are only a conundrum of noise and confusing screeches that would upset a little blind girl. We detour in small towns and dine with the locals while they tell us tales of visitors and creatures we thought only existed in somebody else's imagination.
The little girl never tells me her secret, but I know she's got something to say. The man knows too, but he isn't ever going to let on. I want to keep travelling with them but my stop is coming soon and I have to get off.
This train is only for people who don't know where they are going, it only stops once to let you off and you don't ever get to choose where. There aren't any rules, and I doubt very much that there is a driver, but nonetheless it can only be found by those who most need it and isn't ever there if you look.
This train doesn't need tracks, this train finds its way all on its own.

I'm building walls.

Every day we'll put them up--
tighter and tighter, and closer
until I can't--fucking--breathe.

You can never know me--
no one can.

And every time I make you recoil--every time I push you away,
a little more--
is every time I prove again
that we were all right about you--
people.

And it's the perverse nature of a losing battle--
that every time I see a small victory--
I stand to lose everything.

<<It's like watching myself from outside a bubble--watching every word lash out and scour you, just a little. I know it hurts. And at the same time, I can't do anything to stop it. I want you to fuck off. I want you to prove me right. I know it's never, if, anymore. It's only ever, when.>>

There's no use in alluding anymore. This world wants names, wants facts wants intricate details--its not enough to blanket experiences under the guise of the storyteller and the stories he told. No longer can I moonlight simultaneously as the teller, the doer and the ones it was done too. Perhaps the point has been reached where I either develop an alter-ego or pour out this heart into cookie shaped pieces of life; each one fashioned into a poem. Each one baring just a little too much.
Or so that's what she told me.
I play safe. I will admit. Because its a little too scary to tell you exactly what I mean. Isn't it easier to give you an opportunity to think...of what I'm trying to say without blitzkrieg-ing you with answers.
What ever happened to mystery? I wonder..apparently it doesn't fare so well in words.
The world wants names. Wants facts--and what if I don't know how to give those? What if those names and facts--changed as they might be--don't want to be given?
What if the world isn't ready for the things I have to say; the things that will undoubtedly, eventually come to the surface--
despite all the fight that's left
in me.
Raw words don't want to be read. We want to be buried under molehills of imagery--of nothing.
We want to suffocate just so you can pretend that nothing. Really. Happened.
Raw words want to dilute themselves with baking soda and trips to the pharmacy; to wash off the filth that shows them for what they really are.
Raw words...like carrots in a vegetable patch. They are what they are, nobody would dare to question that. Nobody, though, would eat them either.
There is a battle coming on. It looms closer every time I pick up a pen, and fades a little when I refuse to write the words that wander through my mind.
The battle will rage and in the end one side will die;
my pen will be silent, or I will.

I've done you. I could say--I've seen what you have to offer.

And that would be all. Because to her it would sound so final--there's nothing like words to slash you so violently and leave so little behind. Words whip--

not cream. But flesh. Flesh you can't see until you close your eyes at night and try too hard to fall asleep. Flesh that reverberates in your dreams and claws its way into your nightmares.

But save that for another day. Because it wasn't what--

he meant to say.

He meant to choose a little more carefully. He meant to tell her he wanted to care..

but she forgot to tell him she didn't.

There wasn't any use in denying it. Like the storyteller who forgot to warn the man who lost his soul, she'd sat there with a smile and pretended there wasn't anything to forewarn--

about.

Ten days and two tickets to Paris--she'd watched as it all fell so smoothly around her...everything was smooth indeed. Save. For. Her.

I've done you, I could say. I've seen what you have to offer.

He repeated himself, then he crawled out of bed with a smile and went to fetch--

a glass of water.

Would you believe me if I told you these wings won't make you fly?
Where am I? I have to know. Is it far away in some other lifetime? Am I existing somewhere else too? It would make sense, I believe. I feel these things are happening to me but nobody here is responsible. Experiences and lessons--new ideas form behind my facade but I can't discover where they have come from. They appear from nothing and give me no answers--seemingly sporadic yet tied to some archaic source. Existentialism doesn't even know where to start, and neither do I.

I feel her blink and my eyes shut for a second.
I feel her breath enter my chest and leave--I swear I didn't open my mouth.
I feel her claws grasp on a memory as she struggles
not to let it go--
but I don't know what she's thinking.
Her thoughts flicker and I can feel her emotion--
her reactions to what ever they told her that she'd forgotten.
I know she exists,
but I've never seen her before.
She walks down gravel paths,
kicking pebbles before they fall under her toes.
She likes the sun--
a little too much.
She reads from time to time..
I think she's smarter than me.
But I wouldn't know,
we've never met.
I know she knows I'm here.
I know she feels my pain
when the world fades back to black.
She whispers to me sometimes but her words get lost on the journey--
from thousands of worlds away.

We are one in the same--
her name is mine as well.
The name of millions of miles of separation,
but not a particle of difference.
Two souls born from the same star--
we split just once
and landed infinite planets apart.
Her world is not my own,
and yet I know her inside and out.
In the mirror every morning
her face looks me in the eye.
She sees my breasts when she undresses at night.

It is only our own memories--
the ones we've made since we fell from from the sky--
that wrench us apart and define us.
Memories of places the other would never recognise--
memories of people the other wouldn't know.
Memories of ourselves that don't match,
like we do.
We carve our own and in this we are inherently separate.
Two beings cut from the same stitch in time--
dispersed like sand scatters in a storm.
We exist in our entirety
exempt from the pain of knowing another
so similar.
We exist in different spaces--
allow time to pull apart two pieces
that once were intertwined.

....Spell-binding....

Creativity return--
Seep back into my fingers,
Run hot whispers up my veins;
Pull tendons into shapes--
Make them write your different names.

--My anchor in the deep keeps me still amongst the swells,
If the chain were to break--
I'd drift and sink below to hell...

There isn't a second in time that passes without thought. The mind is never still--if it were a person, we might call it a fidget. It's not, though. It's a wheel that rolls over continents in a day, circles the globe many times in a lifetime.
The mind is your weapon. Bare it with grace, nurture with care. Acknowledge that some will misuse it, make sure you aren't one of them. Don't be fooled by tricks of the imagination--your mind gets bored too, every once in a while.

Every once, in a while.

ephemeral thought. If all I want is to go back, then why am I still moving forward?
Why keep going in the direction in which the memories stop making you smile. Go back. Take me there.
Take me to skies laced with clouds, soaring high on a mountain's breeze. Or further back to a lonely day on Hallows Eve where we climbed towers in Berching and drank wine by candle light as it snowed so we might make new footprints.
Or back even more, to a time when so much was uncertain that it seemed set in stone. To days when the only thing that we knew was that everything would eventually change. And it did.
I miss that feeling I had when we slammed the doors on the jeep and drove south with a car full of life, and I cried because right there was the end of something. Because it was real.
And what is real anymore. Because some days are so numb.
I miss sitting on the bench looking out over the river valley. Ell's bench with a pocket full of sad-song-cds, a pen and a piece of paper. Writing of one, but thinking of the other.
So many. ephemeral. moments I can never take back, never get back. I used to hold my breath for a new day to come, and when I realised time passes slower when you hold your breath I tried my hardest to never let it out.
I don't always see future, past doesn't always remember me.
"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." [the beatles]
We'll see about that.

The unabashed idiocy that surrounds the Western world, and Eastern and Middle for that matter, never ceases to astound me. For god's sakes [and I use this term rather arbitrarily because I don't believe in "God" at least not as [he] translates onto paper] isn't it about time we stop thinking with our pathetically undeveloped noggins and start understanding what's really going on?
In this two thousand and eighth year of history [according to the bible, Jesus, and of course God] we still stutter and trip over ourselves trying to defend things we don't understand. Want specifics? How about the ridiculous divide that exists between pro Palestine and pro Israel. How about the people that come out with absurdities supporting or trashing one side or the other.. people that read two cents on a wall post and decided it's time to give theirs without bothering to find out what they are arguing about?
The older I get [again, using term lightly because I'm not quite archaic] the more I realise that people really are stupid. Ignorant. Combative yet uneducated. And even worse than all of that, unwilling to become educated.
So here is where I blame somebody. Here is where I tell you that the government has fucked us all and we'd better get ready for Armageddon, though not the kind you hear about in Aerosmith songs, except I'm not going to. Because the truth of it all is that we are all each and individually responsible for our ignorance. There isn't another you can blame than yourself for refusing, avoiding and wandering past information. It's out there surrounding us, begging to be caught, yet nobody seems to be able to get a story straight. Obviously some people are a little bit more implicatable than others.. but at the end of it all, we are indefinitely responsible for ourselves, no matter the cards we are dealt in the beginning.
I don't really know what to say, because I am exhausted by trying. I am done trying to educate and inform and have intelligible arguments with people who refuse to learn. I'm not claiming to be perfect. Far from it. But in my favour I don't fight fights that I don't understand. I don't scream that you're wrong, without making damn sure that I know who is right. And I don't even forget to understand the other side, because there always is one, and there always will be.