Monthly Archive

At the moment, I feel like I’m in the middle of several games. Feeling a tiny bit like a child because of the realization that they don’t stop even when we do “grow up”.

The weather is growing slowly colder and everyone is moving in a step closer. Maybe we’re all just trying to keep from freezing.

It’s anyone’s guess.

One is choosing the game, one is determining the pawns, another is rolling the dice. One is calculating risk, one takes a step, one simply tries to knocks another player off the board… At one moment I feel like a pawn, the next I am a Chess Master. But who would I be if there were not moments where I wonder what game is being played and who in the world decided the rules?

And we wonder why we’re so cold! There’s more than what the thermometer hanging from the corner of the house can tell us.

Even while feeling slightly overwhelmed, contentedness isn’t far behind my heels. Memories Halloweens present and past as well as recent discoveries about people around me are keeping me quite content.

I just finished a conversation with someone I haven’t seen in months. Out of the blue we started talking about what beauty is and why humans find things beautiful. Made me think back to last year at this time where I had nothing better to do with my time other than work out algebra problems and spend hours at a coffee-shop in the next town over. Or the year before that when I was naive enough to talk about green traffic lights and your electric guitar.

Now things are different. Yesterday I found myself in one of the few pockets of the universe where several threads in my life cross. Hunger begged to be let inside but Tension had already taken a seat at our table. I proceeded to eat almost nothing the rest of the day. Later that night, Autumn was alive in the air and the fire was warm. Today, something about the sunlight outside the window was enchanting and I spent a few hours of the afternoon soaking in the solitary, peaceful, cozy ingredients of sleep.

I’m not even sure why I’m bothering to write all this down. I don’t know what it might take to get us out of this royal game of Risk/Twister/Monopoly. And I certainly don’t know how retrospection can keep me company at times like this.

(These are the moments when we like to whisper when talking and drink cold apple cider while star-gazing.)

To the readers that may wonder, I am not slipping back into some kind of anchored melancholy. My mind is in a thousand different places tonight. And I’m simply wandering through them with my words. My sentences are my footprints.

Monday will be a new day. But for right now I’m enjoying the simply pleasures of hot tea, a sweatshirt, a quiet house, and memories that are willing to do their share of the talking tonight.

And I’m perfectly okay with pretending no one else is in the car and disappearing into my own world. I am Columbus and the road in front of me is the Unknown World.

In those moments I am a singer with my band and I am singing for six hundred people. My audience are the headlights and streetlights that come into view along the way.

We could sneak onto stage and create a town of people on the walls with our shadows as we dance. Or move to New York city one day without warning and talk deep into the night and long into the sunrise on the porch of a tiny apartment that sits high above an already conscious city. Half eaten toast would be sitting next to me with the small green plant that eats up the sunshine.

I feel alive. Awake.

After the concert was over, the city still called softly. Our feet moved over the wet concrete as window after window spoke life and beauty. Eclectic food, clothing I didn’t know existed, and indie movies playing at the old theatre close by. We walked slowly through the rainy downtown talking about the sweet and gentle music instead of the tense day we left behind.

My dog is asleep at my feet. I am wrapped in a blanket and listening to a song off “Some Mad Hope”. It’s past 1am, and here I am thinking about such small things that run around in my head.

I can barely see your face right now but I know you are there on the other side of the window. I can see the traces of your face and I’m sure I am no stranger by now since my windshield and windows are clear.

I have to wonder about you. Who are you? What things in life do you chase after? What do you get up in the morning for? How long have you been sitting across the parking lot and what are you waiting for?

(Strange, I know.)

When you look through the sheets of glass into the landscape around you, what do you see?

The sun is warm coming in through the window and the air is colder than it has been in at least a week.

Maybe you are the captain of the sailboat in our imaginations. You might be lost in memory and you can’t quite seem to escape.

“Hello, I’m clueless, have we met?”
“No, and if we have I might not tell you. How’s the coffee?”
“Coffee? Oh. This?”
“Yes. Washes down bittersweet memories well.”
“I trade bitter for sweet. Sweet for sour. Sour for nothing.”
“And salty?”
“Salty is for the ocean in the back of my mind.”

Maybe you are a soul wilting in the sun and fading in the cold. Maybe you have the fire within you that has enough light and warmth to keep the rest of us warm and set the world on fire. Maybe you are just one more face. Perhaps I will never speak to you again and it would be alright with both of us. Perhaps you’ll never remember.

You won’t ever read this, so what does it matter?

For now, you’re the captain of the sailboat that has its anchor down in the sand of this parking lot, even though you’ll never know and you’ll never remember.

Analogy One:

And all of a sudden I was against something incredible. My face was pressed against the glass of the next segment of my life. As I looked in my breath fell and clung to the surface in front of me.

I had this abrupt feeling that I should be on the other side.

This transition was much different than before. It wasn’t a dirt path, not a quick jot down a downtown road, not even a highway; it was glass. I was either on one side of the glass or the other. The more sure that I became about wanting to be on the other side the more I realized there was no inbetween.

And so I went to the other side of the glass. No turning back. No second thoughts. No doubt. No heartache. No turning back.

Analogy Two:

My fingers were looped around one of the fabric straps on Alex’s life jacket. He was sitting in front of me and I was holding on tight so I would not fall in. The black and red sea-doo zipped through the cold water. When the sea-doo made sharp turns, the horizon, miles off in the distance, turned only into a line. It wavered and did not remain on it’s axis like it should have. It was almost like whoever holds the string of the horizon in front of our small human faces was late in re-adjusting it to match my angle. (Sounds a bit like existentialistic but I’m just describing what it looked like.)

Thoughts:

(A.k.a. words that have to be written lest they drive me crazy all day)

The horizon is a man-made structure, is it not? Granted we needed names for things we saw, and that line in the distance was sure something we wanted to name. But who would have guessed that by naming the illusion, that line, that it would become something we would think is attainable?

It must be the age of the cowboys again because I know so many people who get hung up on that horizon. They feel like their constantly stuck on the other side of a sheet of glass because they can’t grab a hold of that horizon and wield it to their own liking. The point of a cowboy riding off into the distance is to keep moving, not to lasso the line that the sun hits.

Walk where your feet are. There’s a reason you’re still driving, a reason you’re still on the path you’re on, and there’s a reason your shoes are taking the steps that they are. Don’t stare at your feet but don’t make the fatal mistake of thinking you can wrap your bare hands around that horizon. It will always be in off in the distance in front of you until you’re dead. (Taunting you, haunting you.)

Maybe the horizon would be better named “the future”. That way we might not have as many cowboys hung up on it. In the evening the sun would set into the future and Jack Sparrow would not say, “Now, bring me that horizon” but instead, “Now, bring me the future”.