Stream rushes onward, over rocks, under fallen trees

A leaf, caught in an eddy

Spins

English is such a poor tool

To extract thoughts from a brain

Better to let them fall out

In a sigh

Machinery rumbles past blocking the light

Ripping chunks from the land

No reason

Forgot to care

Much better. Head unglued, disassembled, examined, adjusted, and put back together. With the help of someone pretty damned incredible. Sometimes I’m just amazed at how lucky I get. A little good karma coming back at me again.

It feels good.

Once again, a great weekend comes to a close, and I’m feeling happier and more at peace with the direction my life is growing. Taking another path into uncharted territory, with so many new things to see, to experience, and to share.

It feels very good.

What is life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset
- Crowfoot

Now it’s time to sleep, perchance to dream.

Good dreams.

con·fu·sion n.

1. The act of confusing or the state of being confused: Backstage confusion made the rehearsal difficult.
2. Impaired orientation with respect to time, place, or person; a disturbed mental state.
3. The state of being mixed or blended so as to produce indistinctness or error; indistinct combination; disorder; tumult.

A disturbed mental state. Yeah, that’s about the size of it. Completely spun around and grasping for a frame of reference in a way I’ve never felt before. Attempting to deal with a completely new set of experiences that are enough like others that there shouldn’t be any confusion. But there is. Lots. Why?

If I knew that I might not be so confused.

I have a few ideas. A couple things that I believe have contributed in a large way to my meddled mental state. Now it’s time for the tricky part.

To face them, these inner demons and different stimulants, and find a way to melt them down into their base components. To overcome insecurities, to release, give way, relax and flow.

That’s Plan A of course.

Ever have somebody tell you not to think about something blue?

What’s the first thing you do?

Then there is Plan B. It’s not very pretty. Plan B is I’m about to get another walloping kick to the head as I watch something with so much potential slip away. That’s a thought that harshes my mellow, or would if I were particularly mellow at the moment.

Plan B doesn’t seem incredible likely at the moment, but then again, were I such a stable well rounded and happenin’ individual I might not be so confused right now.

If everything in life were easy, understandable, and made perfect sense, it would be boring as shit. Life is certainly not boring right now. In fact, in a lot of ways it hasn’t been this interesting, this exciting, or this much pure unadulterated fun in a long time.

But why is it that things that have always come so naturally suddenly get all muddled up when a little change comes in from an unexpected direction?

Answer me that, smiling little devil on my shoulder.

Or at least pass me a light while you’re sitting there smoking.

I finally got around to building some admin tools for my quote database again, and have poured in another couple hundred entries. Next, I need to make the author in the pop up window link to the rest of the author’s quotes in the main page. I’ll get around to that pretty soon.

But the other reason I’m posting at this time of night, is that in the process of going through almost 2 years of quotes I’ve been saving up, I found something else that brings up a few vivid memories.

This is a piece I wrote just after I had been hurt by someone’s lack of consideration for my heart, and had decided to forgive them anyway. I never sent this message to them, and reading over it many years later, I wonder now how much I forgave them because I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone right then.

I miss you.

I’m sitting here looking at your picture when I should be working…

remembering the feel of your breath on my cheek. Trying to understand the

feelings in conflict, wanting to hold you again, to feel the realness of your

skin against mine.

Grappling with the demons in my mind, your smile sends them scurrying but

another image heralds their return.

As long as I keep looking forward I feel great. I’ll see you again soon, I’ll

get to hold you and touch you and taste you and know that you don’t mean me any

harm and won’t take my heart lightly. I just can’t quite look back yet. Not

when I’m alone.

I can’t send this to you yet. I don’t want to cause you this pain. Maybe in a

few months/years. But not now.

I did change a good bit after that incident though. The next time she played fast and loose with my heart I let the rage take over, and rocked the guy’s world. Maybe I should have noticed the pattern and left then. But I didn’t. And I don’t regret the decisions that I did make. They were learning experiencies, and the right thing to do at the time given who I was.

The right decision in the same situation is not always the same decision it was the time before.

You might not be the same person you were the last time you faced that decision.

“How am I doing?” Lots of people have asked me that today. Some of them I tell the truth.

I’m happy, I’m smiling, and I’m cautiously hopeful. There’s a spark starting to grow that’s been absent from my life for a long time now.

It’s good. It’s better then good. It’s wanting and being wanted. It’s a knowing smile shared between two people. It’s electricity flowing through the air. It’s amazing.

But that’s not what most people are asking about. So that’s not what I tell them.

I just had four wisdom teeth yanked out this morning, and my jaw is sore. It hurts a bit, and it’ll probably hurt a bit more before it’s all healed. That’s the answer I give most people today.

But that’s only half of my mind today.

I hope the swelling doesn’t increase too much tomorrow. I hope the pain stays at a manageable level. There is someone I’d like to see. I’d like to be able to talk when I see her too.

Of course, life will go on. Eventually, my current pain will be a faded memory, I’ll be eating solid food again, and I’ll know what today’s future looked like.

I could coast along, expecting that I’ll survive. I’m sure I could.

But I’ve never been one to take the path of least resistance. The trails I’ve chosen have brought me to and through some uncomfortable times in my life, but they have been anything but boring.

And sometimes, just sometimes, they are alive with magic.

That’s what makes it all worth the price of admission.