Earthquake

I felt the earth shift beneath my calloused feet. No sounds, no signs, no anything...yet...the earth moved...my life changed.

And my heart bled a few drops more.

A week later came the proof. The words (or rather, the lack thereof).
The landscape HAD changed. It had been transformed.

It’s not that I’m grateful for the fissures and the chasms. I’m not.
It’s just that I felt it as it happened from countless miles and all
the inaudible sounds emanating from so very far away.

My soul, it understood.

OK. Maybe that doesn’t mean all that much to you. I understand.

But it means a great deal to me.

* * *

Wanting=Hurting

Wanting=hurting=wanting=hurting=wanting=hurting=wanting=hurting=
wanting=hurting=wanting=hurting=wanting=hurting=wanting=hurting=
wanting=hurting=wanting=hurting=wanting=hurting=wanting=hurting.

So, how does this story end?

I know, I know...my buddy, Buddha, believed that suffering has a cause, namely craving and attachment (trishna); there is a cessation of suffering, which is nirvana; and there is a path to the cessation of suffering, the “Eightfold Path” of right views, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

My buddy, Buddha, was a right smart man.

Still...

What I want is the brush of warm lips against mine. The comfort of loving arms wrapped around me, my arms lovingly reciprocating. What I crave is to hold another’s hand steadfastly as I walk this earth. What I hunger for is to love and be loved. What hurts is to know that my love makes no difference, that my heart has no outlet for its shy and awkward stammering expression.

Buddha was a righteous dude, a right smart man, but I’m no Buddha...

I'm just a wanting/hurting man.

* * *

Gratuitous non-sequitor:

Is there a more unlikely pairing than Diana Krall and Elvis Costello? Methinks not.

* * *

For Alia

* * *

Bejeweled Window

I fell to slumber during a late-winter rain. The night tap, tap, tapped its winsome serenade and sent me dreaming.

Came the dawn and a bleary eye opened to diamonds on my window panes. They glowed and shimmered with liquid amber and daybreak rainbows. The window a portal to magic and beckoning beauty.

How could I not smile?

* * *

Tough Love?

Love’s a tough critter. One of the toughest. Love can survive all manner of illness, dire financial hardship, mishaps, missteps, misery, distance, time and death itself.

Impressive. Awe-inspiring.

It would seem that Love can endure and survive anything. Not quite.

It can’t survive neglect or lack of respect.

* * *

Death Mask

Winter’s death grip unexpectedly relaxed these past few days. Balmy air appeared...a cosmic fluke...a meteorological misstep. Still, the warmth was welcome. Snow melted to puddle. Birds sang again.

The death grip? Well, as it turns out, it hadn’t quite given up entirely.

Given the fact that the pedestrian walkway was now free of snow and the air rather invigorating, I went for a long walk.

It was quite good, as walks can be, until I came upon the yearling dead beside the trail.

Oh, I’ve seen road kill before. Lots of it. Up close and personal, as anyone who has ventured far on a motorcycle has experienced and can relate. (Factoid: armadillos bloating in the Texas sun are the worst).

This yearling was different. I didn’t know if it was a buck or a doe. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was that it was a young thing. What mattered most is that it had died with its forelegs propped upright...that it had died while struggling to raise its crushed body in one final effort to...what? The yearling died and froze mid-struggle.

I stood there transfixed. Mortified. Perplexed. Humbled. How brave the soul that struggles to survive when survival is no longer possible.

I’m not that brave.

* * *

As I walked home, heart heavy, I flashed on the image of my father’s face in death. He had died unexpectedly and was, therefore, autopsied. I asked to see him before the body was transported to the crematorium. An orderly wheeled the gurney into a private room and discreetly left. The body had been refrigerated. It was frozen. I could feel the chill through the thin shroud covering my father. I pulled away the sheet from his face and I was propelled back by the stark reality of the ashen skin, the bluish lips and...the agony frozen in time...the face of a man struggling for his last sip of air. I caressed his head and kissed him good-bye.

But I wish I had never seen him like THAT.

* * *

Gratuitous Non-Sequitor:

I added a playlist at the bottom of my blog. Feel free to sample
the tunes that resonate inside of me.

* * *

Man in the Mirror

I never know who I’ll find staring back at me in the morning mirror.
I swear I wake each day with freshly-morphed marrow encased within the same old skin.

It was a week or so ago when I woke convinced that all words had lost their meaning. I had been regaled by so many...so many proved false.

There are days when I wake an optimist. A warrior. A vagabond.
An exile. A forlorn lover. A dreamer.

Today I woke a pessimist.

I wonder if the Sun finds all of this amusing?

* * *

"By acting like a man in love, he became a man in love again..."

* * *

In the Fog of Ambiguity...

all conclusions are suspect.

Words of love are exchanged. Hopeful, devoted, passionate, ambitious, endearing words are bestowed and welcomed. Shared and believed. Then a stranger’s kiss turns worlds upside down. Confusion. Words collide with actions in the fog. Truth becomes illusory.

Trust is the first tragic casualty.

More words, more acts...lost in the dense fog of ambiguity. Whispers are garbled, signs seem indecipherable, time becomes indeterminate.

In the dense fog of ambiguity, the road(s) ahead and the road behind are lost or indiscernible...and all conclusions are suspect.

* * *