pensive

I really like the word "pensive", and think of it as a state of being I'd like to achieve. I also apply to it my own, expounded-upon, definition outside of being deep in thought. I add an element of patient excitement that makes me think that's simply how I view life. Every moment I have a sort of wondrous longing for what's coming next. Sometimes that leads to an impatient anxiousness, and the tightrope between paranoid and calm is one that I am always walking from one moment to the next. If this balance is to be the struggle of my life, than perhaps redefining such an enchanting word as "pensive" is the key to my happiness.

When a simple phone call could set in motion a series of events which would bring about an answer to the question I've been posing myself - not necessarily an answer to what I need - the momentary supersedes the long-term. The grounded awareness of strict and unadulterated desire stakes its claim over the impulses of action. My hindsight has developed twenty-four years of looking back all for the benefit of looking ahead to something that will eventually become a rearview thought; a page in my chapters of growing which humbly accept they're nowhere near the end, yet always the most important. My tomorrows ask of themselves not to be worried over. They tell me, "you have more to do today, we'll have our fun when you are ready." To that, I pensively embrace what's in front of me.

reactions

I can't really think of anything wrong with being a reactionary. Some people might imagine it as a disregard for consequences or an ignorance of cause and effect and deem it a dangerous practice. But those are mindsets separate from allowing yourself a little less restriction from the blunt honesty of your thoughts. I know she wasn't faking the look on her face before I caught her off guard; standing at the back of the balcony, barely in sight of the stage. Less than two days prior she had voiced disconcertion over seeing a band she had never heard before. Yet, here she was displaying the kind of genuine smile and unabashed happiness that I could only react to by being practically speechless.

potentional

I'm gonna write about her. I'm gonna do it. There will be quite a lot of blogger.com saved drafts and Moleskine notebook pages of scribbled prose. And yet I'm so cautious about doing it. Like, almost afraid - which I should be, considering the pain I have experienced. Still, it doesn't always feel like defense as much as a steadfast patience. That is something new, and in its own way exciting. The eve is always better than the day, I think. The potential of love's lightness intrigues me more now, and "meeting her in the middle" is a thousand times more fair that the "fair" I've settled for. But I am not writing about her beauty now. I am not expounding for pages on the curls of her smile and soft response of her skin. This is me predicting those pages. This is something we call "potential".

boundless white

I'm lying on the ice rink at my parent's house. It's dark. I'm alone. I was listening to Halloween, Alaska, skating around in the dark, and I laid down on the ice with my arms and legs spread out. As the song I was listening to started to build I just had to sit up. But before I do, I look towards the house and the garage and my car. The boards of the ice rink are high enough that I don't see anything below their edge looking up other than the house, garage and my car. It looks as if on the other side of this ice rink the world just ends.

Like this is all there is. And it's a little scary. To be this isolated.

I know I'm not. I can hear cars driving past me. And of course I know there's a world of things out there, my thoughts are on them; considerably. It's a little more beautiful, but still scary. That the world could end right there on the other side of my car.

As I think these thoughts I'm losing my awareness of the cold. Until I think that, and then I start to feel it. As I sit up I can see now the expanse of snow that is the field that extends behind my parent's house, and it's just so WHITE. So untouched and white. I want to go running - running in the field. Until I lose my breath and just collapse in the snow. It's a boundless, boundless white. I know it wouldn't go forever, but it would go as far as I need it to, and I would just run and run and not think about getting back, and the day to come and tomorrow and next week and next year, anything, I would just be lost in the running. The running through the snow. And maybe I would fall asleep in the snow. I have such a hard time taking naps.

And then I want to be reading a book. I don't care what book. A book I hate. A book that's hard to read through but I'm reading anyway, and I'm not just glancing over the pages and forgetting the story almost as soon as I read it. I'm absorbing it. I'm really absorbing it. And it doesn't matter what it is, just so long as it's becoming part of me. Something I know that I can feel inside of me. And it's not that I don't want it, it's that I don't know how to get it. I don't know how to get more inside of me. I feel overflown with things I don't want. I don't know how to let the right things in. I want love. I want to let love in, and I don't know how. Because every time I try, I try to believe that it's not real. I try to tell myself it's not real. I try to find its flaws and its holes because I want it to be perfect and I know that it's not. And so I think it's not good enough for me. But this field of snow, so white, stretching before me. It's perfect. I just want to fall asleep.

red meat

I've been far removed from my own happiness. Like an ignorant dog so coaxed from its home by the faulty promise of a juicy streak. It was only a mirage - the impression of pleasure in my mind - that I had stumbled upon a solution to my life's great mystery. (Well, I've never liked steaks.) Now I see so plainly how the constant questioning did not truly seek answers as much as it exposed the underlying issue. My happiness belongs to no one. Certainly to no one unwilling to ask my opinion; to share time and space, the fundamentals of a stable relationship. The weight does not come from a touch on the thigh or a planned evening on the horizon. The true foundation is built with calm understanding of thoughts and desires. We are all so generously allowed our own opinions. It is nothing like selfish to be yourself. No peace of mind would ever come from lying to someone, when their interests turn your stomach on end and fill you with an uneasiness akin to shaking your enemy's hand.

That is not to say that no pleasure can be found in a quickening heart and a rush of feeling on the skin. It is a different kind of happiness. I unexpectedly learned how to separate the momentary, the fleeting, from love. Like pieces from different puzzles I then tried to jam them together and pass the resulting hybrid off as pure. It did me so much harm that I am wandering lost in returning it to its rightful place, only after the devoted attachment of the soul. To think I believed any other way would bring me peace of mind. Relief only begins to explain the feeling of being in control of that again! If anything ever came close to regret in my heart, in my past, it would be my own false fidelity.