….and there are nights. i don’t take care of myself half as well as i should, and i am less concerned about that, than makes good sense. the constant change, and the continual need for adaptation, grate. so i listen to old songs, not thinking of the things that were, but thinking of the things that might still be.
…do not read too much into my writings. especially when they are so intermittent, they have a tendency to be conglomerations of half-started endeavors roughly cobbled together and eventually posted as one post, and yes, even though i spend so little time writing these days, i spend even less time editing. some of the inherent obtuseness is unintentional.
on that note, the previous post had nothing to do with anyone in town: it referred to the two individuals i refer to as “my long-distance crazy stalkers,” and yes, it was intended to tweak their noses a little bit, but not maliciously. i am very happy in the reality i have with my lady (although it exists in an unlovely place) and i am also happy to have the friends in my life whom i have. i hope our friendship continues.
but yeah, just because the whole girlfriend routine makes it uncomfortable to talk to you sometimes, and couple that with the crazy work/kids/girlfriend/soccer schedule, doesn’t mean that i’ve been working to get rid of you just because we don’t talk much. and it’s not like i single you out for not paying attention to. even my twitter friends suffer from the same thing nowadays: my presence there is almost fully automated. you are not alone, but you are still loved, admired, liked, and respected (as appropriate).
i’m busy, dammit. and when i’m not busy, i’m distracted. you knew this years ago, and found it charming. keep it in mind, please.
;-P
there are mornings like this which linger across days
gentle mornings filled with the wonder of your presence
and the touch of your skin against mine
and they wrap themselves around me
for longer than i ever dared dream
yeah, so i get a little sappy sometimes. so what.
i haven’t been writing much, because i’ve been pretty happy. i’m of that sadly predictable bent that requires conflict, angst and/or depression to write “artistically”, and i just haven’t really been conflicted, full of angst, or depressed.
yeah, sorry, i know how terribly much that stinks.
it was a long, cold, wet spring, and now the summer whistles by far too quickly, with far too little time for doing all the things i’d really like to do, but that’s how it always is.
i’m happy, but i think internally i may still be at a crossroads. the determination of how, exactly, to move forward beneath the light of some things, while firmly outside the light of other things, weighs on me now in ways that i don’t find comfortable. so much change has been, and so much continues, but what stands before me now seems simultaneously insurmountable and insubstantial. i feel that i can just barely discern what’s standing before me, but i know damn well i have to cross it before i can truly begin moving on.
and one of those things….
little deaths
it took a couple of little deaths for some things to begin healing inside me. the first of those was back in January, where complete, abject avoidance proved to be the stronger suit. it was a tough series of cards to play as an empath, i don’t mind admitting, but having played them, i know i am the better for it. i couldn’t hold anything resembling a coherent conversation with that one, and as a result, i am now even further removed from my past and the dreams i once dared to dream.
but that was quite fitting, after all.
the other little death occurred just recently, and while i still fail to understand just where exactly that particular train got derailed, i’m by no means pleased that i had to once again play the “unconcerned non-observer” role to get by. the words should have been enough, and the actions (or lack thereof), would have made my intentions clear to even the most deluded. but no, somehow, they were not. so that one wandered away in a fit of peevish self-pity void of exactly what i knew all along was lacking: a true to desire to change the reality in which she had entombed herself.
life goes this way, sadly, far too often. no one has piqued my pity and disappointment quite as well as these two fine souls have managed, and they are gone.
little deaths: little things turned grey within me, but i hope their lives prosper in positive ways.
(for that last one, a restatement of the obvious ~ in peace)
you knew
what it would and wouldn’t
be, let alone become,
long before i ever had the opportunity
to confuse it all. you knew
what would fail to move
before you set about to redefine
the benefit in attempting
to change what you knew would be
unmoved.
you knew
the realities surrounding
you, and chose to color them
in forgettable hues. you knew
where i stood, and transported
me, redefined me, and who i became
through your eyes was unrecognizable,
so i stepped away, thus becoming
unmoved.
the 23rd/24th of this month marks the completion of our first year together, ghosts, memories and all. we don’t like being apart from each other.
and that is the greatest gift i have ever been given.
Things go in certain ways, at times, and the difficulty comes not in the way they go or where they take you, but in the fact that once you’re there, where you’ve been most often becomes unrecognizable, and all the new places you have to go hide mysteriously behind the veils of your own closed eyelids.
Perspective is a bitch, like that.
I don’t know if I’m midlife-crisis-ing or what, but my perspective has been shifting all over the place, lately. In some ways, I feel the best I’ve ever felt (mentally, emotionally, and I’m getting there physically again), but in other ways, it’s almost as if everything I do is ultimately pointless. And ultimately, I just get mad at myself for feeling sorry for myself.
But unholy fuckity-fuck, I need to get out of this place. The waiting for it bleeds.
I know, I’ve said that before. I’ll have to dig up that old poem; I’m definitely in that mode of late, and it’s related somewhat to this post.
But this waiting, this stasis, the waiting for it to lift or be lifted bleeds like water flows, and I am somehow at the head and foot of it all.
Which, incidentally, means it’s nothing new.
Go figure.
nearly unimaginable, these things which requite inattention with sycophantic disassociation.
the norm in such circumstances is a deference to evasion which goes unnoticed in deference
to the terminal expedience of meandering colloquies undifferentiated by their inherent presumption.
but that is how we do it, cast in stone.
yes, it took me seventeen months after i left to say that. yes, that indicates just how much i defer to peacemaking and unrequited respect. yes, in the saying of it, i obviously used a context that caused confusion. yes, the words were probably not pleasant to hear.
and no, i do not feel better, now.
it’s funny, how the subconscious works: what lurks, pent-up and invisible, sometimes springing into light at the most inconvenient of times, and what things can consistently avoid the various attempts at control. it defies redefinition because it constantly redefines itself: that process through which we reconcile the inevitable with the inevitability of the unreconciled.
altruistically speaking, altruism died just a little bit today. i shall not mourn it, for its ashes feed me.
but, yes, it is over; yes, it is done; and yes, it’s about time this was accepted by the other one who caused it to be.
yes, as one of you (that is the one who actually reads this….hello, old friend) pointed out the other day, there must be something going on because i’m not writing anymore.
how very right you are.
the bulk of the “free time” has been caught up in time with the kids, preparing for spring soccer, running the Thinking Unenslaved Radio Show, and work on unenslaved.com ~ yes, i’ve been neglectful of this place, and thus, of me.
very sorry, dear (likely) solo reader who probably has given up on me.
of course, the flip-side of even posting here indicates something else, doesn’t it. yes, indeed, portions of my little world do appear to be slowly falling apart, and you know what? if i gave a shit more, i might attain apathy.
just maybe.
don’t get me wrong; it still elicits an emotional response, but this is obviously not the right mood to be writing in. o wait, nevermind, this is about the only mood i ever write in, i’m just on the wrong side of it right now.
later. i’m busy letting it slide. you can, too.
because it doesn’t really matter.
at all.
hush.
I never expected life to be this…odd. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, and I knew it wouldn’t all be very fun from time to time, but I didn’t expect it to be this odd. And no, I don’t really know what constitutes “odd”. A collection of things, I suppose: the way it feels, the people involved, the things they say, the preeminence of “new,” the exigency to understand my own past. At times, it still feels artificial, and yet it’s so very real, so very mine.
Time for me typically moves quite quickly, and that’s why the past fifteen months or so have been so odd, as I felt stalled here at a crossroads in the road of my life. I’ve maundered for more than a year on which direction to take, or how to correct my course, or how to do whatever thing would be required in whatever metaphor I might conjure. And I’ve ultimately gone nowhere.
It was time, and it was past time, and I was truly about to lose all hope.
To that end, some decisions are made, not in haste, but after significant consideration, then delivered quickly. The motivations for the speed of delivery can be myriad, but they typically have at least something to do with a lack of desire to prolong the obvious. It is unfortunate when such decisions countermand previous ones, but life is about survival, and sometimes survival is a harsh sentence. I was been drowning, and I had been trying to rescue myself from the flood with nothing but a collection of memories, a misplaced sense of duty, and talking too much.
Yes, I lacked even a real desire to get out of the water, or step back out onto the road, or anything. I’m brilliant like that, sometimes.
It was time, and it was past time, and the flood was carrying me away.
I could have done things differently, but I actually tried all the options I perceived over the past year, and kept coming back around to that status quo out of weakness. The necessary action was painfully obvious to me over a year ago, and that it’s taken that long to drive it home, and in such a furious fashion, is simply unfortunate. And now, as I move past those moments, I see there was never even a true crossroads: a side-alley into something quite unlike whomever I am becoming, is all there really was.
Of course, I realize that’s hindsight, but by the same token, it is what it is. That cliché has been haunting me all too much, recently.
Last year, the parting from that other one was so ragged it never really let go. So this year, the breaking had to be sheer, her contempt for me complete, and the enforced distance between us void of any real possibility of repair. I am neither pleased or proud with the darkness under which it had to be enacted, but my heart (my soul, if I have one), is lighter, and freer, for having finally done so. I have done the right thing (unfortunately, in some regards, I do not doubt), for I am no longer breathing a water tainted by inaction, insecurity, and distrust. And my own two feet are carrying me forward again: forward, past this “whatever” and into a future in which I have not forgotten myself.
There is time, and there is more time, and the clock is now wound by my own hand.
I am loved, deeply, immeasurably, by someone who sees me for what I am, who appreciates my talents and accepts my deficiencies, and doesn’t want or need me to change or redefine myself in order for her to be comfortable with me. A someone who is so remarkable as to have stood beside me through these recent upheavals, fought for me through them, and who holds to me now, rightfully expecting the deepest reciprocation.
And I shall hold to this someone, this one who helped me pull myself from those tainted waters, who chooses to walk beside me on this road, with everything that I am and hope to become, for as long as she allows me.
And the only oddity now is that it took me this long. Although that, for me, really isn’t all that odd at all.
there is time, and there are dreams.
there is light, and there are questions.
there is hope, and there are discoveries.
and there are things to come: the timing of dreams, the light of doubt, and the discovery of hope.
if we are not alive to ourselves within the confines of our own minds, we live for nothing, dream for nothing, and hope for nothing. and i have become most tired with living this way, for if we are not alive to each other within the confines of our respective realities, we remake ourselves in the images of failure.
and for how long was my life like that?
in the past few months, i have been more alive than i ever was. i awoke this morning in the light of all my life, and it was no longer grey. would that i could awake every day, having fulfilled a promise made to myself long ago. would that i could go to sleep each night, confident in the fact that i have contributed the most possible.
and would that every moment could be spent in the light of you.
in days to come, i am tasked with the duty of realization. and in nights to come, certain demons must be banished.
the days have collided into one long, interminable scream: so much so that i’ve forgotten what i’m screaming for or about or to or why or wherefore. and i don’t even scream aloud.
so same, the days
in essence
so governed by extremity
and the levity of change
that dream
undisclosed
we grieve that none may know
the inner joy
engendered by the storms
that was jotted down during some work meeting in which i had only a bit part, if any. i don’t know exactly when. and the entire sentiment of not knowing that is exactly how things have been.
shit. that rhymed. you can shoot me now.
i am actually doing well. things change rapidly, which always seems to be the case with me. i don’t try to make things difficult, but that could well be simply another way of saying that i don’t have to try.
happiness approaches, which is not to say i’m entirely displeased with the here-and-now.
ugh. i’m gonna stop now. too many caveats, and i barely just started.
(on a completely unrelated subject: i don’t know what the hell “melon berry” skittles are supposed to taste like, but they taste like the smell of an old man’s farts contained with decades-old wet flannel. don’t ask.)
The following is at least tangentially relevant to my mental state of late. Which really isn’t saying much for me.
Sigh. I did it again.
(from “Porcupine”, Echo and the Bunnymen, on “Porcupine”, 1983)
There is no comparison
Between things about to have been.
Missing the point of our mission
Will we become misshapen?A change of heart
Will force the nail,
Nailed to the door
To all avail.There are no divisions
Between things about to collide.
Hitting the floor with our vision,
A focus at some point arrives.