“Under a sky, no one sees,
Waiting, watching it happening.
Don’t hurry give it time,
Things are the way they have to be.
Slow down, give it time,
Still life, you know I’m listening.
The moment that you want is coming if you give it time

When you wake up, when you wake up,
You will find me
When you wake up, when you wake up,
You will find me

Under a sky, no one else sees,
yourself appears in front of me,
*the sky clears, the sun hits* ... i'm here
Waiting, what's happening.
The moment that you want is coming if you give it time

When you wake up, when you wake up,
You will find me
When you wake up, when you wake up,
You will find me”

Still Life – The Horrors 

This song has been rattling around in my head for a week. It has a great hook, sounds really good and I'm a big fan of the band; but that isn't why. I can't shake this tune because of the lyric and the way it describes everything I want with such eloquence. Every morning when my alarm rings the first thing I do after shutting it off is turn my head to see an empty pillow, and I am realizing I am not really ok with that. I'm not ok with settling for some random person either, so I wait. I know you are out there, and I suspect you feel it too.

In the meantime, I am getting a goddamed kitten.

there have been too many reasons to think about mortality this past week. the death of friends, relationships, dreams; all these carry their own weight - it is left to us to choose the direction this heaviness pushes us in.

i don't really talk to many people about this sort of thing. it just gets to be a bit much - i am fine, and will be fine tomorrow, but tonight I am listening to vienna by Billy Joel and crying like a schoolgirl.

life is a beautiful thing, but i fucking hate this part.

"Slow down you crazy child
You're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart tell me why
Are you still so afraid?
Where's the fire, what's the hurry about?
You better cool it off before you burn it out
You got so much to do and only
So many hours in a day

But you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want
Or you can just get old
You're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through
When will you realize...Vienna waits for you

Slow down you're doing fine
You can't be everything you want to be
Before your time
Although it's so romantic on the borderline tonight (tonight)
Too bad but it's the life you lead
You're so ahead of yourself
That you forgot what you need
Though you can see when you're wrong
You know you can't always see when you're right(you're right)

You got your passion you got your pride
But don't you know that only fools are satisfied?
Dream on but don't imagine they'll all come true
When will you realize
Vienna waits for you

Slow down you crazy child
Take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while
It's alright you can afford to lose a day or two
When will you realize...
Vienna waits for you.

And you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want
Or you can just get old
You're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through

Why don't you realize...Vienna waits for you
When will you realize...Vienna waits for you"


Vienna - Billy Joel

three fishes

today was/is a good day.

like most good days, it was not an easy day - rather the kind of time that shows you what you are.

well, it reminds you anyway.

either way, today i made a decision i have wrestled with for some time; and a part of me is at peace finally. time will be the tell if my choices were right or wrong i suppose. but for now, for this moment, i am at rest.

serendipty

I just had the most bizarre conversation. At a bar of all places.

With a girl no less.

I suppose its a good sign that I didn’t want to take advantage of the place she was in... it was pretty sad really. I hope the advice I gave was fitting, and that she figures out how to be comfortable in that skin she has.  

post -non-rapture rant

 started this as a reply to a post on fb this morning  – got a little long winded, so now it's here.

Yesterday we “survived” another end of the world. Once again someone promised the world a get of out jail free card and people ate it up. It was wrapped up (as usual) in a pretty package of religion, but rooted (again as per usual) in a pretty bow of non-responsibility. Too much debt? No problem. Life not what you thought it would be? No problem. Job suck? No problem – it's all out of your control! The global lottery is on the way to take away all your issues! One wave of this mystical wand and you get swooped away to heaven or nirvana or valhalla or your cosmic vestal-virgin laden harem. That is not how it works, people. There is no fairy dust to be sprinkled. Ignoring personal responsibility is not a viable solution to the problems in our world, it IS the problem in our world. So many folks listen to what jesus had to say about four horses and totally miss the bits he says about feeding the poor, protecting the weak, accepting the outcast. In some twisted horrible irony most seem to want to sit together and hear about these things while simultaneously dreaming up ways to avoid doing any of them. I don't recall any of the stories about his 33 years where he passed on an opportunity to be a part of helping someone in the “here and now” because he thought it would be okay if me made some grandiose gesture later on. To quote Don Henley (yes, I'm that old.):

“ To this garden we were given, and always took for granted
-It's like my daddy told me, “You just bloom where you're planted.”
Now you long to be delivered From this world of pain and strife
-that's a sorry substitution for a spiritual life”

Now, lest anyone be confused, let me say very clearly that I by no means think I have this figured out. Believe me, if I thought for a second that yesterday was actually going to be the end of the world I would have begged the powers that be for more time, not less. I have way to much crap left here to be sorted out. I want to see my children grow and learn their part in all of this.

Life isn't easy, but quitting sounds boring.

(I also want to be around when The Cults finally release their album next month.)

Department of Morons and Vitirol

So I went to the dmv today. Nothing super exciting there, but it did provide me with an hour and a half of mingling with a people group that I otherwise wouldn’t normally associate with – oh the humanity (if you can call it that)… The one constant that I experienced there and pretty much everywhere I have turned today is the incredible amount of hatred people seem to harbor.

Bin Laden is dead. It was bound to happen sooner or later – that in itself doesn’t phase me much, its one more life lost to add to the thousands who have died in these attacks and retaliations. I would have hoped that people were going to react somewhat differently. The cheering, the demonstrations, the mass display of bloodlust has been staggering. I actually sat and listened to a woman today say that she felt “cheated” that he had been killed. Cheated. In her words, he should have been “put in a cage so the public could watch him suffer”. Why? How does anyone derive pleasure at watching someone’s destruction? Don’t get me wrong, I am not writing this in support of his actions. He was an evil man who was responsible for a great deal of suffering. I just cannot understand this mob mentality that seems to have gripped the nation… it disturbs me at my very core.

I want to believe we are better than this. As campy as it sounds, I want to believe we can forgive, that we can heal. That somewhere in this mess the human race can find a common thread and move forward. If we continue to fuel ourselves on hatred and ignorance, we all lose. It’s not sustainable – it is the cancer that eats away at us; and yet here it is, celebrated in our media and embraced by our nation.

To quote Jane Porter, “The best manner of avenging ourselves is by not resembling him who has injured us”

Road-Trip!

I cannot remember a time when I have felt so alone and so connected all at the same time. I am on a really interesting part of this journey, it's kind of like a spiritual road-trip. Traveling along, watching scenery, enjoying stops along the way - and yet no destination in sight. Maybe that is the point, if we are being honest with ourselves and growing closer there is no destination. No forever. No assurances. There is just the road in front of us. We meet others as we move along. We connect. Share. Then we continue on our way.

I do love me a road-trip, and this one is shaping up to be pretty dammed fantastic.

yeah. that.

tonight i find myself in that place. the one where there seems to be so much to be said; and yet no words to utter.

at least none that seem worthwhile.

on the positive side, the silence is comfortable.

beneficial, even.

in fact, the "right now" is pretty great actually. i know that hardly makes for interesting reading but it is the truth - not that everything in my life is great or even good, and it certainly isn't "to plan". it's more the fact that i am learning to not give things more focus than they deserve and also to not give them less than they need.

balance.

peace.

all manner of good happiness stuff.

it's springtime, kids - in more ways than one.

2$ bottles!

Ok, so this is going to be one of those posts where I turn up Fever Ray pretty loud and just type whatever shit pops into my head. Entertaining? Possibly. More likely incoherent and non-consequential.

I had a great talk with a good friend of mine last night over some watery (but more importantly 2$) beers, and came to a bit of an epiphany about myself. Epiphany might be an incorrect word choice , but in the spirit of transcribing my thought stream I will use it anyway...

We were talking about some decisions I am in the middle of and I noticed a bit of a pattern in my personal history. Here it is in a nutshell:

I allow myself to get into a situation where there needs to be immediate action taken to prevent some sort of critical mass event, and so I limit my criteria to only the bare minimum required to avoid disaster. This in and of itself is not so much a bad thing. The problem happens when I choose to dedicate myself to that course; meaning that once the immediate problem or need is met, I choose to stay with that option without considering if it is the best long term solution for me. *I understand that I am being a bit nebulous here – hopefully this makes a marginal amount of sense.* I will then proceed to stay in a sub-optimal situation out of some bullshit sense of responsibility or commitment even though it ceases to be beneficial and sometimes long enough that it actually turns into a determent. This behavior has manifested in pretty much all areas of my life at one point or another for as long as I can remember. The interesting thing about seeing this pattern was that I honestly didn't choose to beat myself up about it. I was/am able to look at it and see it for what it is and know that I am able to choose weather or not I will continue the pattern, I realized on a very base level that I am not bound by my past. Pretty cool feeling if I do say so myself.

With that realization came the knowledge that the criteria I have been using as a base for life choices has been pretty skewed – any time we make decisions based on a sense of nostalgia for what a thing was or on our hope for what a thing could become we by default tend to ignore what a thing actually IS. As I posted the other day, I have been reading Tolle's book “The Power of Now”. For the record, the concept is sound. Be present. Give your undivided attention to what is happening at this moment. That isn't a license to ignore your past or future, it is the key to be able to consider the reality of both of those things while allowing you to be a slave to neither. As he says in the book, the past is the past. The future isn't here yet. The only time they have real meaning is the moment when they were/will be the now. It's pretty amazing how much clearer things become when they are looked at through that lens.

Alright. Drink is empty. Mind is cleared. You can all go back to shaking your heads at the rest of the internets now.

Then See What Happens

A couple of years ago now, someone who ended up becoming a very close friend of mine turned me on to the writings of Eckhart Tolle. When I first read “A New Earth” I was pretty blown away not so much because it introduced me to any shatteringly revolutionary information, but rather that it put words to things that had been on the fringes of my mind. Concepts that in my heart I already knew to be true even though I could not consciously articulate them. That book sparked something in me that has been evolving ever since. I certainly have not “arrived” as yet, in fact, truth be told I have stopped trying to “get” anywhere to be honest. It has actually been a pretty remarkable thing to watch how well life can unfold when I stop trying to force my will upon it.




Earlier today I was able to make some time to be alone. I was driving in the rain and decided I would pull into a small park and read a bit (big props to my kindle app for keeping my library handy).




I opened up another of Tolle's books, “The Power of Now”, and wanted to share what I found.





“What happens to the pain-body when we become conscious enough to break our
identification with it?

Unconsciousness creates it; consciousness transmutes it into itself. St. Paul expressed this universal principle beautifully: "Everything is shown up by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light." Just as you cannot fight the darkness, you cannot fight the pain-body. Trying to do so would create inner conflict and thus further pain. Watching it is enough. Watching it implies accepting it as part of what is at that moment.
The pain-body consists of trapped life-energy that has split off from your total energy field and has temporarily become autonomous through the unnatural process of mind identification. It has turned in on itself and become anti-life, like an animal trying to devour its own tail. Why do you think our civilization has become so life-destructive?
But even the life-destructive forces are still life-energy.
When you start to disidentify and become the watcher, the painbody will continue to operate for a while and will try to trick you into identifying with it again. Although you are no longer energizing it through your identification, it has a certain momentum, just like a spinning wheel that will keep turning for a while even when it is no longer being propelled. At this stage, it may also create physical aches and pains in different parts of the body, but they won't last. Stay present, stay conscious. Be the ever-alert guardian of your inner space. You need to be present enough to be able to watch the pain-body directly and feel its energy. It then cannot control your thinking.The moment your thinking is aligned with the energy field of the painbody, you are identified with it and again feeding it with your thoughts.
For example, if anger is the predominant energy vibration of the pain-body and you think angry thoughts, dwelling on what someone did to you or what you are going to do to him or her, then you have become unconscious, and the pain-body has become "you." Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath. Or when a dark mood comes upon you and you start getting into a negative mind-pattern and thinking how dreadful your life is, your thinking has become aligned with the pain-body, and you have become unconscious and vulnerable to the pain-body's attack. "Unconscious," the way that I use the word here, means to be identified with some mental or emotional pattern. It implies a complete absence of the watcher. Sustained conscious attention severs the link between the painbody and your thought processes and brings about the process of transmutation. It is as if the pain becomes fuel for the flame of your consciousness, which then burns more brightly as a result. This is the esoteric meaning of the ancient art of alchemy. the transmutation of base metal into gold, of suffering into consciousness. The split within is healed, and you become whole again. Your responsibility then is not to create further pain. Let me summarize the process. Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don't think about it - don't let the feeling turn into thinking. Don't judge or analyze. Don't make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of "the one who observes," the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.”


Eckhart Tolle “The Power of Now” pg29

christmas at frickin' dennys

It doesn't escape me that my favorite christmas song is also one of the saddest songs I know. It's not a lyric I can relate to in a literal way, I just love the writers take on the holiday.

I understand that to is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year and all that; and I will concede that I do have some wonderful memories of this time of year, but it is by far my least favorite holiday. I hate the rabid consumerism associated with it but that is not the main reason. The holiday just has never really clicked with me on a base level. Norman Rockwell I am not. This year has it's own set of unique circumstances associated with it that in no way make it likely to change that – seven days out it is shaping up to be the consummate example of “just another day”. I do not find this depressing, I am merely dispassionate about the entire affair. This is not generally much of a conversation topic among my friends and I – most people take my feelings about it as a reason to try and “make it better”. I see the reasoning, and appreciate their motives. I don't think of my lack of christmas cheer as a problem, however, it is just the way it is. To be brutally honest, the only thing I really love about this holiday is watching my children tear into their gifts, and that isn't on the menu this year.

Joyeux noel, everyone. Peace, love and good happiness stuff to you all.


“they got Christmas Muzak
piped in through the ceiling
and the refills of coffee
are always for free
and the waitress on graveyard
and the surly night manager
are wishing that all of us losers would leave

there’s a star on the sign
at the Texaco Station
like the star long ago
on that midnight clear
as I look all around
at these cold, empty faces
I doubt that you'd find many wise men here

and I'm dreaming about
a silent night
holy night
when things were alright
and I'm dreaming about
how my life could have been
if only, if only, if only
but somewhere down the road
I gave up that fight
merry Christmas
it's Christmas at Denny's tonight

once I had a home
and a wife and a daughter
had a company job
earning middle-class pay
then Lisa got killed
by a car near the schoolyard
and my wife started drinking
just to get through each day

I will never forget that little red wagon
turning to rust all alone in the rain
one morning I flagged down
a truck on the highway
I just couldn't bear to go back there again

and I'm dreaming about
a silent night
holy night
when things were alright
and I'm dreaming about
how my life could have been
if only, if only, if only
well, it's not just the blind man 
who loses his sight
merry Christmas
it's Christmas at Denny's tonight

they say
life's made of cruel circumstance
fate plays the tune and we dance
dance til we drop
in the dust and we're gone
and the world just goes on

the cop at the counter
he's the guardian angel
he watches these orphans
through dark mirrored shades
and the register rings
like a bell sadly tolling
for the fools we've become
and the price that we paid

oh when I was a boy
I believed in Christmas
miracle season to make a new start
I don't need no miracle, sweet baby Jesus
just help me find
some kind of hope in my heart

and I'm dreaming about
a silent night
holy night
when things were alright
and I'm dreaming about
how my life could have been
if only, if only, if only
but I'll still be here
at the morning's first light
merry Christmas
it's Christmas at Denny's tonight
merry Christmas
it's Christmas at Denny's tonight”


~Randy Stonehill

Dream Away

“All you good-doers lay your weary heads
Thorn filled pillows on feather beds
Sing your love songs on Sunday morning
Close your eyes and we'll
Dream away, my love knows no boundaries
Dream away

All you lonely hearts will you ever love
Diamond rings stained with red-rose blood
Sing your songs about valentine mourning
Take my hand and we'll
Dream away, my love knows no boundaries
Dream away

Shine your light
Can't see too good at night
But I know
I know where they come from
Where they go

All you still unborn hide your pretty faces
Mother's dirty nails don't care about you
Comatose in your private nightmare and
You're not far but one
Dream away, my love knows no boundaries
Dream away”

- the northern pikes


Ok, so I have been avoiding writing for the last days.

Luckily, its not like I have an avid readership or anything, so no harm done.

The last few months have taught me that I have a serious love/hate relationship with being alone – and also that I am far from being actually “alone” - which is a really great thing. I am blessed to have people in my life that are wonderful – I know that I am loved, even that I am indeed lovely. (wow that sounds pathetic as I read it back, true as it may be)

If you are reading this (and I am pretty sure you are at this point...) I hope that it is evident that I don't really like to bitch and moan about things. Honestly, I don't. Anyhow, I am realizing even more these days that there is a really fine line between knowing the right thing to choose and actually choosing it. I would like to think that I can make that choice correctly when required, but a large part of me thinks I am totally full of shit for thinking that. My ape brain self is still at heart a hedonist – and there are plenty of situations in life where it has a LOT of pull in my decision making. I suppose that this is true for a lot of us even if we choose not to admit it. Sure, we all want to believe that we are strong enough to be in control of our actions on a conscious level and that our decision making is unimpaired. Most of us are at least strong enough to take responsibility for those actions.

The real trouble is that we often mistake fear for strength. We cave into our base level, knee-jerk reactions and then justify ourselves after the fact by stiffening our spine and telling anyone who will listen what out reasoning was.

“they did blah, blah, blah.”

“they failed to do yadda, yadda, yadda”

“I couldn't do this because...”

It's all the same bullshit at the end of the day. We do what we do. Very few of us are in a situation where there is a gun to our head at decision time. We stand alone at that moment and we choose what we will do, whether or not we will consider the result; we choose our own outcome. Pinning our situation on another is not strength, it is the highest form of cowardice.

Snake

I have a somewhat closeted and extremely underexposed love of poetry. Saw this today and loved it, so I thought it wise to share.

-----

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough
before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down,
over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet,
to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders,
and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing
into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness,
and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind
convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Taormina, 1923
D.H. Lawrence

Meet the Author Day

“can I be myself in the presence of people who don't understand me?”

This question was posed at a book signing/open discussion I attended tonight. It struck a chord in me when I realized that until recently I would not have been able to answer “yes” to it honestly. I spent a good deal of time (well, a long time) very uncomfortable in my skin. Insecurity was/has been an issue for me since I was a kid, for as far back as I can remember I had the sinking feeling that sooner or later someone would realize that I didn't belong, that I was somehow not deserving of my position. It gripped me in a way that is difficult to explain; in a way, I suppose I allowed it to define me.

Then one day I woke up.

“One day” might be a bit of an overstep... it has taken time for me to realize who and what I actually am – and even longer for me to accept what I am not. But, regardless of the timeline, my skin has gotten comfortable – it fits me well these days. Finally.

Hoping you can say the same.

"These are good times to put down the sword and pick up the pen.”

That was a part of my horoscope for tomorrow, but I think I might adopt it as a more long term mantra.

Writing is therapy for me, whether it is for public consumption or just for myself it is one of the most effective ways I process anything. Conversation can be great as well, but involves another's opinions by default. When I write I am forced to face my own thoughts, my own opinions. These unfiltered snippets reflect me, more often than not I read this stuff back and think “ah, so thats what I really feel about that”. It's a bit like wandering around a new town without a map. Sometimes I wish I were better at it, whatever that means, but this emotion fades quickly. It isn't a job for me, and it is something that I do that seeks no validation. I simply do it because on some levels I have to. There is no real process or method I follow, no deadline, no expectation – it's one of the few things in my life that I do for me and me alone. I am not going to try and come off too detached, I am certainly aware and appreciate that you read these words – but that is not the reason I do it. Lord knows that if it were I might consider that I should give a flying fuck about things like grammar and form and sentence structure... mercifully for me, given my “ability”, I could really care less about any of that.

What I do care about, is that I still feel like I have something to say.

Generally when I write it is based around an idea or concept that starts churning around in my head and will not stop. The best metaphor I can think of would be that it is like having an upset stomach – you ignore it as long as you can and then eventually you realize that you are going to purge. Usually this makes things feel much better.

This also seems to often apply for me when I read back the outcome that is left on the page afterward. (self-effacing tendencies in full swing...)

letters to the dead

I'm writing letters to the dead, saying things I never said
You can hear me, your words echo right here on my arm
When I felt the needle pierce my flesh
I knew you never left

Paths divided, miles were crossed -
Regret is not a concept for the faint of heart
Never knew your happiness, his song wasn't mine to hear
Your voice transposed and transplanted to whisper in her ear

Dreams, like youth and twisted metal, can't carry on forever
The waking hours fall silent now as they have for years
No caustic wit. No brazen laugh. No brother's well placed word.
Just a missing smirk, an untouched drink and memories remain.

11/9

So I just realized that today is my ex-wedding anniversary. Its an odd day for me each year – I really look forward to forgetting this date – but I'm not sure I ever will. It is etched pretty deep.

It doesn't bring pain, nor happiness – its just another day really, just a day that reminds me of what I once thought was a good idea...

It shines an interesting light on decisions I am making in the present tense that I feel are also right and good.

It's basically a big fucking beacon that says - “you were wrong then, jackass. what makes you thing you are right now?”

I know in my head that thats bullshit thinking, but its tricky to argue with the logic, I am too smart to know any better.

In my head, I know that the past is just that, the past. It doesn't have to frame the present. I spend a good deal of time reminding myself of that fact. Hopefully that isn't time well wasted.

In the real world, though, it is THE major thing that attacks my confidence. It DOES frame my reality to some extent. I have been so very wrong before – and this silly box on the calendar serves to remind me of just how serious the consequences are when I misjudge at that level. It serves to remind me that there is no such thing as a trivial choice. In a way November 11th means more now then it did when I was still married. It stands no longer for an eternal union. It stands no longer for love, commitment, joy... It stands as a grave marker to my decision-making. There are times when I believe what it has to say about me, even though everything I am cries out for it to be wrong. My actions often argue with me on this.

Anyway, happy anniversary to me is in order – raise a glass if you have one, I am sitting this toast out.

hey buddy, spare some change?

I know, I know, another “change” post. What can I say, it's a reoccurring theme for me. Well, reoccurring is the wrong word, it's is THE theme.

When I first started down this road, I hated change. Even feared it. My life was riddled with compromises I had made simply to maintain the status quo. It is as if I thought that I could prevent the tides by simply ignoring them. That approach does appear to work for a time. You shift, shimmy and juggle; you sell off small pieces of yourself and fight tooth and nail to maintain things the way they are. However, you eventually recognize that there really isn't much left to sell. With that comes the knowledge that although you have kept those things around you, you yourself have changed. Your “death by a thousand little cuts” is complete and the rotting husk of who you were is left to wilt in the sun.

That pretty much sums up the position I found myself in (that I had put myself in) when I first sat down and started this blog. I looked in my face in the mirror that morning and as I had done many times before asked my reflection “who the fuck is THAT?”...

Somewhere inside me a voice actually answered and said “I have no idea, but I don't like him at all”. Mercifully, I actually listened.

In the next two years, my life was turned upside down. I got divorced. I moved. I have changed jobs. I have made new friendships, disposed of some others. I started looking for the bits of me I had sold off and took them back into myself. I questioned everything that I took as fact (alas, this one doesn't stop). I have loved deeper than I thought possible, and learned what it is to let that go. I have fought. In some ways, I have won, and in a lot of ways, lost. I have learned that the only true way to hold anything is with an open hand. I have discovered strength, and I have embraced my weaknesses. I have found comfort in my own skin.

Above all, I have learned that change is not an enemy. It just might be the dearest friend and teacher I have encountered. Yes, it is merciless. It is relentless, committed to accomplish it's task at all costs. Change works tirelessly to show us life's hidden constants. To reveal to us the things at do not change, the foundational truths that hold the essence of who we are together. I wish there was a universal list of these for me to share, but it is something you need to find within yourself.

Alternately, of course, you could just go on doing what I did all those years, and simply choose to believe your own bullshit for a while longer. There is always tomorrow, right?

Well... not always.