Monthly Archive

Last night on the drive home I imagined that I was sailing a sailboat across town. The few raindrops that fell onto my windshield were like a constellation unfolding onto the glass. I imagine it was my night sky and the red lights I had to stop at were sea ports. My sailboat cut through the darkness swiftly; gently. It didn’t help that the music playing made me feel like I had tripped into a movie. 

I remember you telling me all of these elaborate stories. We would stay up late; our computer screens lighting up the edges of our faces in the darkness. I spent my hours reading your words and letting your voice play through my head. Some may aruge (and I may argue with them someday) that it was a waste of time, an idle event built on nothing put our keyboards… But we had our imaginations.

You would tell me of how you were going to start writing messages in sidewalk chalk all through town. The townspeople would stir and soon newspaper articles and t.v. news stories would start to float to the surface about this midnight marauder who terrorized the sidewalks with positive messages made of chalk.

One time you had me convince you were going to hitch-hike to my house. You were a marvelous story teller. I remember conversations about how you were in the middle of writing the novel that was going to make you famous, how you were going to open a shop that sells leather-bound notebooks, how you would follow at my heels if I suddenly left for Africa, and how you were always the super hero in your dreams. Though sadly, like a child you could never hold onto anything except your memories for very long.

The hitch-hiking was a joke. The novels never turned out to be any logner than a few pages, the second leather-bound notebook couldn’t come together right so you became anger and abandoned it, and I never went to Africa.

You showed me a new meaning of imagination and what it meant to create dreams. Unfortunately, you also showed me what it meant to forget them.

Days like these are some of the most beautiful to me; the crisp, first days of Fall where I leave my windows open on purpose just so I need my sweatshirt even more. The days where I want to dance to every dance to every song I hear and for once I don’t turn down my music when I’m sitting at red lights. Where I am so incredibly happy to spend a half hour on the roads I do on my way to and from church just because of how pretty they are just as they’re leaves start shaking and going pale. “Maybe it’s just me, but the air seems so much more clear in the fall.”

Recently there was such a drastic change in my life, and that’s not so uncommon but it’s uncommon because of how I’ve done almost a complete 180 degree turn. Where before I was closing doors inside myself and turning off bits and pieces of my personality, I am finally awake and opening the doors and I am at Life’s heels every morning. Maybe I was asleep for eight months? I don’t regret a moment of it and there is no anger or loathing leftover, but I feel so much more alive right now than I ever have in my entire life.

Whether it’s dancing alone in my kitchen to “Dear Las Vegas” by De Capulet, drinking the first cider of the season, shrinking down to my chair in church to block out a song while my heart was thumping, sitting in a small basement clapping along with the rest of the audience while we watched the artist play his guitar ten feet in front of us, singing Paramore while driving with friends to get stir-fry, being educated on sushi and how to use chopsticks by two of my coworkers, winning a game of bowling with a score of 86 by one point, letting go of balloons in a parking lot, waking up easily and going into work early while it’s still quiet, laughing with my sister during several-hour conversations, riding a recumbent bike for the first time and feeling like a child because of how I had to learn how to balance all over again, ducking out into the rain after hugs and a concert, eating cream of wheat with a close friend at midnight, or clicking with someone you met five minutes ago that you know you were supposed to meet for some reason…

I’ve discovered that there is so much life.

I feel alive.

And the best part?

This is only the beginning.

It was a hot day in the middle of the summer. The air was so thick I thought I could almost taste it, and the sun was pouring itself out onto our skin as we moved about the world busily. I pulled into the gas station that sat on a small rise in the middle of a massive intersection in the middle of town. Being sometime near rush hour the sun refracted and flickered like sparks off the hundreds of cars moving through the intersection and the connecting roads. The warm wind swelled around me. I was absent-mindedly staring at the gas pump my hand was resting on, when I looked up.

It was like someone had pressed the pause button on time. The cars on the several roads leading into the intersection weren’t moving. All the constant motion, the traffic lights, had stopped. Everything holding it’s breath.

A train was slithering its way through the intersection.

–

There had to be hundreds of thousands of people. There were thousands swimming below through the streets of the downtown city going from tent to tent looking at the best art of the year, others moving between attractions in the carnival, some standing on the curb of the sidewalk digging their teeth deep into the rack of pork ribs dripping with barbeque sauce, others moving about from stage to stage listening to music ranging from hardcore to Caribbean steel drums.

Up on top of the parking garage things weren’t any better. There was a concert venue mantled on top of the parking garage that sat on the outskirts of the festival, and I have never seen so many people in one place my entire life. It was around 10pm, and I was doing my best to walk close and keep up with the person in front of me without hanging onto their sleeve.

Face after face after face went past me. People slid, walked, or bumped me as we manuevered through the throngs of people to find seats for the concert. I was fighting some deep, internal feeling of panic. So many pairs of eyes, so many bodies around me, so many voices, so many souls in one place.

(So many eyes.)

After finding stationary seats, talking about the opening bands with the people I came with, and doing amusing people watching, I started to feel okay. The panic had been reduced to some small twinge of nauseau in my stomach and even that dissapated eventually. Finally after the openers had finished, the free tshirts had been thrown out to the crowd, and after the commercials and introductions were over, it was the moment every last being in the venue had been waiting for.

The three men walking onto stage. The lights. The opening note. The opening line.

And then the eruption of the audience, the eruption of sound.

–

As I was driving around the curve and up onto the hill into the industrial park towards my office. I was peering into my rearview mirror more than I should because I was trying to get a glimpse of the sun. It was about 8pm and the sun was reappearing after a horrendous (and threatening) storm blew through the city. The air was thick, warm and almost foggy from the recent downpour.

I finally caught sight of it and then decided to turn around and head back the other direction. -I have to see this.- I thought. When going the opposite direction on the road I was on, when going back down the hill you can see a bird’s eye view of the whole city.

And there, sure enough.

A large, immaculate circle of brilliant orange burning its way through the sky over a just-drenched, bustling city.

I am thinking of you. I cannot hide it. You are far from here, but the afternoon is overcast and the warm breeze is whispering someone’s name. I am listening closely but I try to appear as if I cannot hear the lowered voice of the wind. For the first time I wish myself a reason to be outside simply so I could stay in the blue shaded parking lot to listen longer.

There are pieces of you left here like crumbs or seeds from a sweet fruit that are stuck in my teeth.

This week I feel fragile. My smile could crumple at any moment and my tears would come fast and without hesitation. This week I feel fragile. A china doll.