Pondering

No telling what thoughts will come to mind as illumined reality fades to dark illusion.

Sampling:

Surveys of prison inmates indicate that thieves are generally highly optimistic individuals. I dunno. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that.

And this:

If it holds true that we need love the most when we’re the least lovable, then how do I reconcile that with another truism: that one must first be lovable to be loved?

And I’m still kinda intrigued by the way my jukebox sub-conscious offers tunes that seep into my guts and marrow and (in fairly short order) reveal Truths. And how, when I contemplate Truths, I see how obvious they were from the very start, but I was blind. Blinded by dreams and desires. It’s far more comfortable to filter one’s eyes through hopes, is it not? Truths are elusive simply because we truly do not wish to behold them.

* * *

April Come She Will

I find it hard to explain how much the music of Simon and Garfunkel resonates within me. We go back a long, long ways...to the 60’s. I find it even harder to explain what that decade meant to me.

So I have this neural jukebox and songs begin to play inside my head exactly as recorded. They simply begin to play. I kinda groove on that. My sub-conscious cavorting as a DJ.

And so this song began to play in my head today. Over and over again. And I was transported to the endless summers of young love.

How was I to know there would be so many Septembers?

* * *
And then it hit me...the full truth, import and weight of the words
she wrote months ago:

"I love him, but I don't think I'm in love with him."

* * *

Lost and Running

Krista’s done it, again. It’s kinda weirdin’ me out, frankly. I don’t know her. I’ve never met her. I don’t think she's ever visited my blog. Still, every time I drop by hers, I hear a song I’ve never heard before, and/but it’s RIGHT. I always hear a righteous tune, a song that captures what I’m feeling at the exact time that I’m feeling...

It’s weird.

Oh I was sick and tired of waiting lost
You were mad at me for so much more
I was bored listening to the same old chords
You would complain I was never around

And we shouldn't hope
No we shouldn't hope
If love is so easy then why am I stuck?
If life is so smooth why can't I get enough?

(C'mon, sing it!)
I'm still lost and running
I can't get enough
No, I'm still lost and running
I can't get enough

Oh, every day moves like a hurricane
It's dragging me around no matter what I say
Night time in the city streets, I'm out of luck
The cobblestones are dark and wet
There's no one I trust

Yeah, it comes around
And it comes around
Mr. So-Easy say where have you gone?
I'm looking for somewhere I can lay down my arms

Oh, I'm still lost and running
I can't get enough
No, I'm still lost and running
I can't get enough
No I'm still lost and running
Somewhere I lay down my arms
Oh I'm still lost and running
I can't get enough

Oh, oh, oh...
Oh. Oh.
Oh, oh, oh...

I'm taking my time I let it float away
Tell me no lies and you'd have nothing to say
The further we slip into this rabbit hole
The harder we look for a new place to go

Oh, I'm still lost and running
I can't get enough
(C'mon, sing it!)
I'm still lost and running
I can't get enough
No, I'm still lost and running
Somewhere I lay down my arms
Oh, I'm still lost and running
I can't get enough

(I'm still lost and running)
Well the harder we look
(I'm still lost and running)
For a new place to go
(I'm still lost and running)
Yeah the harder we look
(I'm still lost and running)
For a new place to go

(I'm still lost and running)
You can't lay there in my arms
(I'm still lost and running)
You can't lay there in my arms
I'm still lost and running

* * *

Blue Train

Blue Train

Another day is ending
And I remember when
My world came falling down
Out there the stars stopped dancing
Lost in my darkness now
The rain keeps falling down

Light of my life, where have you gone?
Love's true flame dies without the warmth of your sun

Here comes a blue train rolling
Across my heart it crawls
The rain still pouring down
Another day it scares me
A little later maybe
Love will roll around

Light of my life, where have you gone?
Love's true flame dies without the warmth of your sun

I've been waiting on the corner
Yeah, I've been waiting for your sign to be found
I've been waiting on the corner
I've been waiting for your sign now
Oh now

Light of my life, where have you gone?
Love's true flame dies without the warmth of your sun

So you know the blue train go
It carry my heart and my soul
Whistle blowing - blue train rolling
Carry my darkness all around
Whistle blowing - blue train rolling
Carry my heart away

I've been waiting on the corner
I've been wishing for a sign now
I've been waiting on the corner
I've been waiting for your sign, now, oh

Whistle blowing - blue train going
Calling across my mind now

I've been standing on the corner
I've been waiting for your sign now
Hear the blue train, hear the blue train
It's the blue train rolling

* * *

Correspondence

My Beloved,

I knew the poem would resonate within you, as it did inside me.

How am I, you ask?

I move through my days in a quiet rhythm. Melancholy and hope more or less in balance. I feel an emptiness and a restlessness and "I've grown really good at missing you...I practice every day". The past is slowly receding and the future grows more alluring.

I watched the film In Bruges, a few days ago. Have you seen it? While the screenplay was oddly compelling, it was the locale, the city itself, that took my breath away. I vowed that I will visit Bruges someday.
I had no idea such a gem existed. And I thought how much I'd love to visit Bruges with you, how I know that you would be every bit as enchanted as I...

I worry about you every day...throughout each day.

And I contemplate what you wrote in your thank you card, that:
"I am blessed having you in my life" when all the while I feel like a forlorn exile...standing alone as you recede farther into the distance. Left to cheer for you and pray for you and love you as a stranger from the outside looking in...no longer truly "in your life."

I look beyond the snow and ice knowing that spring will come. I am patient with myself, others, the season and the healing. I wish there was music in my life, in my heart, but there's precious little. It doesn't bother me as much as it once did...but I patiently await its return as a sign of redemption and a harbinger of joy. Much like Noah, I suppose, waiting for the dove to return bearing an olive branch.

I grow thinner. My hair brush collects ever more hair. I ponder when, not if, to adopt a dog and a cat or two (I sorely need the exercise and great big dollops of animal wisdom).

And I sort and cull and donate and discard...preparing the foundation for a new life that I know will be slow in coming yet am certain will arrive. I take a Seroquel tablet at twilight to sleep and I experience incredibly vivid dreams. Some nights, I dream of you.

And how are you, My Love?

* * *

Risk
by Anaïs Nin

And then the day came,
when the risk to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took to Blossom.

* * *

Squirrel Dreams?

Not all that many squirrels romp around my neighborhood. Not surprising, given that my little community sprang unexpectedly from over-tilled cornfields. A paltry number of trees dot my immediate landscape. I can count them on the fingers of one hand.

It was in the middle of our deep freeze when my eyes gazed upon the skeletal tree to the east. It looked incredibly forlorn. There, near the terminus of an anorexic limb, bulged a solitary squirrel’s nest. I became fixated on the mysteries of squirrels and survival in the grip of winter’s harsh reality. I’ve no doubt the fact my nuts were frozen helped to fuel my fugue.

How do they do it? How does a squirrel survive sub-freezing temperatures and bitter winter winds? I know that if I were to attempt such a feat, I’d be dead within hours. And yet, the squirrel sleeps. Despite the roaring winds, the sleet or hail or shards of ice, the squirrel sleeps blanketed only by its tail.

And what does the squirrel dream?

Does it toss and turn within its heaving, tortured nest? Does it wake in the dead of the deadest night, frozen within ice, and bewail its very existence? Does it curse? Does it fret? Does it lose all hope and simply succumb to death? Apparently not.

The squirrel sleeps. What must this hardy soul dream such that it can endure, survive? Does it dream of spectacular summer days, of plump seeds and amorous exploits? Is there more? Is there healing magic? What dreams can so beguile a soul that it wills itself to endure the unendurable? I’d like to know.

I need a few dreams like that myself.

* * *


* * *

Deep Freeze

My goodness, it’s cold out there!

It’s been a while since I’ve felt cold as cold as this. The landscape outside my window shivers in crystalline silence. My car is salted-gray and door knob dead. Its battery gave up the ghost sometime yesterday. No matter. I feel no need to venture far from my front door.

I step outside to sweep away the drifts that drifted onto my front steps. I crunch my way to the mailbox and crunch my way back home again. My nostrils glue themselves closed immediately and gloved fingers freeze within scant minutes.

It’s cold out there!

Inside once more, the roof-rafters crack without fair warning,
the furnace hums, and I applaud winter’s sheer magnificence.

It’s cold out there!

The frozen air is pure.

* * *

* * *

Waiting on Love

I can’t seem to banish this phrase from my skull. Literature, drama and poesy are replete with dramatic variants on the basic concept. Oh yes, Romance and Tragedy revolve about such themes. I’ve swooned and cried in consequence...as have multitudes.

There are those of us who wait for Love...and those who don’t. There are the Fools and there are the Wise but...I swear...I can’t distinguish one from the other.

Tell me, Dear Reader, should one wait on Love or should one not?

There are those who wait months, years, decades...even a lifetime...
for Love unrequited. Are they wrong? Are they foolish?

I honestly don’t know.

True love is worth a great deal of sacrifice. THAT I know. But...but...
if the Love were true, why would either have had to wait?

I honestly don't know.

I’ve spent the last several years waiting on Love. Not living, merely functioning, simply dawdling and loitering. I came up empty-handed. Was the waiting worth it? Was the possibility of Love worth the gamble? Were the pointless days, sleepless nights and drunken stupors worth the waste? I don’t know.

Perhaps, I’ll never know.

Still, there is this:

* * *