Three Friends

I miss you.  Three words.  Strong words, and a truth hurling deep inside.  I saw your picture today and remembered your gone.  I missed you today and that's fine.

What is the book inside me?  What are the pages waiting to be set?  The ink of the text falls flat until my eyes become heavy or my energy is dry.  I'm looking for something that's not there.  I'm writing invisible lines just to keep going.  None of this seems with a concrete purpose; none of it appears to come from anywhere beyond my fingers.

August isn't always great and this year is similar.  A move. A first house purchase.  A totaled car (or three in the family).  A new job.  An online class I started late.  September seems to be much better (coming from one that can't stay put in the present).  A four in the ninth month, a question of sanity.  Still, people trust me.  They come to me with questions.  I'm not sure where any of this is going, but I hope for hands to hold.

Codependency, interdependence, and intimacy.  What a combination, really.  A heart, a head, and a hand.  Like three people directing a show.  Three madmen leading the tour.  Is it worth following these men?  Where are they leading us?  Will they help us find our way?

And I do not want imitations of myself.  I don't want clones or colonies.  I want empowerment of others.  I want vigor and valor from timidity and turbulence.  I want the disdained to learn to trust, the fearful to learn to fly, and the lonely to know the embrace of a true and requited love.  I do not want for myself.  Yes, I will need headwaters to keep this stream going, but largely I just want to flow into others.  Water rushing, flowing downstream into new life.

Time.

Is it the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow?  Do we all experience it symmetrically or somehow the same way?  Is it anything more than a complex social construct?

Ask the pioneer who ventured into the unknown how his time passed.  The rugged, wrinkled man that went searching for adventure and returned to restlessness when the trail ran dry.  Time quickens to a pace unspeakable when the journey is fresh.  Once his heels have become buried in the ground complacency slips its mask on.  Adventure doesn't ever last.  Time crawls when joy dissipates or interior smiles evaporate.

The grandmother waiting in the hospital lounge.  No one can disturb her except the slightest movement or touch.  Maybe there's a chance her grandson will make it.  Maybe he'll walk.  And what about her daughter?  How will she fare? Time loses track of itself.  Time gets stuck between floors in the elevator.  It pulls out its playing cards and teaches Joan and Jill to play crazy eights.  No sign of maintenance coming and there is no need.

Field of Vision

I cannot look behind me.  That's just one reason why I need another.  I cannot see through the blinds.  Looking backward there will always be something behind me.  I think the late twenties (and into the thirties) is a spectrum vacillating between isolation and intimacy, community and loneliness.  It's rain clouds outlined in silver permanent marker.

And in this day this age range is an extended adolescence.  Where have we gone wrong?  What needs repairing?  How do we make adjustments if we do not know where the leak is?  Go to the root but when you get there it's cold, dark, and empty save for your own reflection in the shallow cesspool.

Alone and lonely are not always good friends.  A lonely neighbor can be surrounded by cardboard cutouts while alone is a location.

Maybe this is just my field of vision.  My perspective.  My lens.  My point of view.

Basta.

May Flowers?

How convenient that we made it here.  How convenient that the flowers grew this way.  Maybe May flowers are on the horizon.  Maybe June will bring something new.
I'm trying not to think so quickly, so far along.  I couldn't remember your face but now I at least have something to go on.  Now at least there's something there.  I'm telling people but I don't want to spoil the potential.  I don't want to ruin the moment.  Let's just take our time; I don't have to worry about how things will go. Let's follow along where the river flows, no need to rush it along.
There is a horizon and we don't need to reach for it.  Nor does it make sense to let dread burry our minds.  Worry is not becoming for us.
Let's just hold on
to each other for now.  I'll see you again soon.  My dreams aren't whispers or shadows; perhaps they're glimpses of an upcoming life.  Maybe we'll be together, but for now we don't have to rush things.
New feelings.  Or new now.  Thunderstorms in a state of sunshine.  I feel rumbling in the breeze and it's alright right now.  I wanted to tell you that I miss you before but the feeling is gone now.  I'll see you soon, I said.
It's okay if you see nothing here.  Right now just feels like a space filler, but we'll get there.  Don't worry.  There's no need to romanticize the moment.  We'll get there.  Everything is in its place.  Everything is working out.
We will not worry.  After all, it is not becoming for us.  See you soon.

April Showers

My soul is not a pendulum alternating between grace and justice.  Your love is not a carrot that you tangle just out of my reach.  Nor is it an obligation that you begrudgingly bestow upon us.  You choose us.  You chose us.  You want what is best for us.  You want us to see ourselves as You see us.  You want to share Your love so that we may become who You made us to be.  I don't need a missing puzzle piece, this jigsaw is complete.  I am enough.  I am sufficient as is, no assembly required.  I don't need fancy words or a wife to fill me up.

Please don't read this as flattery or imagined adoration.  This is not a "fake it 'til you make it" scenario.  I can make it from here.  I'm just looking for the steps as I gradually crawl from the darkened shadows.  I'm walking and growing ever so slowly to move from living to thriving.  This right here.  The soul beneath this skin is not made of dandelions and clovers.  The soil is enriched with nutrients.  I am flowers coming up for air in springtime.  Rain falls.  Sun scorches.  Even worms crawl in my midst.  But I am flowers, not afraid of growing.

Courage takes vulnerability and I am on my way.
Please plant me near the flowing stream.  Renew me from the roots up, refreshed in the gentle breeze.

Just Loneliness

No one warned me.  They never teach us in school of the isolation of independence.  They don't tell us how to endure days on end with little more than ticking clocks.  I'm finding more of me these days, but in a way that is less and less social.  It's like these opaque walls are mirrors staring back at me, silently judging my near inability to budge.

I miss the thunderstorms, the rain that I could match.  I miss having what I thought was nothing, the quiet conversations in the background with familiar voices.  I feel like I don't know anyone here, especially my own reflection.  Who is the man staring back at me?  How can I find a way out of this chasm if I don't even know where I am?  Some may say to retrace my steps, but that's part of what I thought I did and my footprints have long since been buried.  I knew it wouldn't be the same but why can't I even push myself out from underneath this anti-sociability.  No, that can't be true; surely I must be exaggerating to some extent there..

My very being feels like a whisper cascading down blank concrete walls.  Where I used to see potential now lay a dead battery.  Sometimes I smell the tempting scent of an anticipatory blank canvas, but I can't always trace it's origins.  My legs don't carry me like they used to.  Those words sound older than I am but I don't have a stroller nor someone to push me anymore.  Maybe it was once some thing instead of someone.  I cannot tell you for sure.

So many misses.  I should join a horseshoe club.  So deep in thought when I want to be active.  So empty when most of what they see surely appears put together.  How do I reveal this without crashing?  How do I run without running away or just seeking to hide?  I wish I could tell you how I feel but I don't even know who you are.  I don't even have words except this wasted jumble of letters. Who can relate?  Who can hear me whispering ever louder into the vast abyss?  Why bother?  What's the point of trying anymore?  What purpose does any of this serve?  After all, it's all just a chasing of the wind, isn't it?  Does anything push a gear further that leads to something more than large-scale progress?  Is there a crank that promotes personal progress?  If so, why haven't I found it yet?  Why does it elude my grasp?

Is this just loneliness?
Or perhaps
is this loneliness just?

Who is writing this?

"The only thing keeping you from achieving greatness is yourself."  They say it all the time - heck, I've even said it myself.  I don't always believe it though.  I don't think I can do this life alone.  Sure, I've made it this far, but if I'm being honest I've been far from alone.  These last five years or so have been in and out (mostly in) of the sphere of aloneness.  The more "connected" we become, the further isolated I feel.  I can't keep looking back to the past with a romantic gaze.

I will say here and now that this time is not romantic.  It's not so pleasant living here alone, with nothing but my shadows to accompany me.  Most weekends find me restless staring at the walls and wishing for someone - anyone - to talk back.  Too often I fall asleep because if I were to stay awake I would just fall apart.  I feel like plaster peeling from the walls, my dry life scraping away the pleasure to make room for a painless and complacent discomfort.

I didn't paint my walls this color, so how did they turn out this way?  I didn't want a life like this, so who's life am I living?  What is the life I've chosen or where did it go?  I'm like a whisper on the tongue of a timid student, too afraid to escape and too vital to give up.  Who's life is this that I'm living, and if I want to start over where would I even begin again?

If life is but a dream I want to wake up, I want to get moving.  I want to go back to where I was, or who I was.  Someone save my head from this vice grip; I'm gradually losing brain cells, energy, and the strength to continue.  Who else is here?  Who else can enter into this without falling down the hole that I'm trapped inside?

Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up as someone else.  Maybe in a few days I'll realize that the last several years have all just been vapor and I have another chance.  But the chances are more than likely that I'll have to continue where I am and learn to reach further with the strength I have.  The probability that I'm awake and living is overwhelming out of my favor.  So, I guess now is as good a time as any to start doing something.  But that's the thing.  I don't know how to start because I don't know where to go and I don't know what I'm missing.  It's like trying to find the missing piece to an inverted puzzle.  I don't know what piece is missing, and if I did I wouldn't know where to place it.

Maybe I'm not as much of a mess as I think I am, but I can't convince myself of that yet.  I know myself too well to believe the flattering clichés and hollow words I try to tell myself.  I can't lie to myself and hope to believe it.  How will anyone believe me if I don't believe myself?  That's why I need community.  That's why I need another's touch.  I need someone to come and wake me up because I haven't seen my true reflection in years.  Who am I anymore?  Why should I care to continue this life if the current trend is nothing but dull, repeated shadows?