"You looked like a princess the night we met
With your hair piled up high
I will never forget.
I'm drunk right now baby,
But I've got to be
Or I never could tell you
What you meant to me"
- Randy Neuman, “Marie”


There are times that you need a push.. Something to kick you right to the edge, just so you know how far it is you are about to fall. Whisky works well. For some it is wine… For me it is single malt scotch; preferably with a nicotine chaser. If you play it right you get to that place: drunk enough where honesty cuts through, sober enough to know it isn’t just the alcohol talking.

I spoke to a friend of mine today that I haven’t seen in a long time. It was great to reconnect, and it was in a strange way comforting to hear that the human condition plays no favorites. Pain is pain and we all deal with it in our own way; making, as the poet so eloquently said: “too many compromises to make it through the day”. Life didn’t start out that way for any of us. So full of promise, placing our hope in an ideal, latching onto the fantasy that says life is all love and happiness. Don’t misunderstand; it isn’t wrong to want that, its just not realistic to think that you are walking into a fairytale. I know that sounds incredibly jaded, and more than likely, depressing. That is not the intent… it is just to point out that fantasy gets in the way of reality, not the other way around. There comes a time when we realize that regardless what we thought our lives would be, they are what they are, and no amount of wishing is going to change that. It can change, but positive change is never a passive event. It takes work; apparently that is where character comes from… (Hopefully a cool character, like Mr. Pink, and not some schmuck like Brandon Walsh….) I wrote earlier about painkillers, the analogy holds true here. I have spent the last few weeks wondering why/how I haven’t really felt anything about this divorce and I am finally waking up to the reason – Painkillers. Not pills (although not entirely a bad idea… ) Its easy to let my heart wander, hell, at this point I think it isn’t even have to wander, it remembers where to go. Cutting these off is not something I am anxious for, but I know I’m won’t have any idea what the pain level here in the real world will be until I do… The struggles this life offers up are just footnotes in our story, we choose weather they will help shape us or if they will define us. One is inevitable, the other isn’t. I need tofeel it now before I shove it down low enough that it grows roots.. Time belly up to the bar I suppose.… Well, at least that’s what I am thinking after my third glass of scotch.

Character. Integrity, Honesty. Faith. All three are cornerstones. For some ingenious reason, I seem to have decided to settle at hypocrisy. I probably should have gone the way of stupidity so that I wouldn’t have to have knowledge of that. The bliss of ignorance really sounds like a nice break.