It just feels like a day that I should spend writing.

And by that it is possible that I mean..."I have so many other things I have to do."

I am about to fall into the rabbit hole of structure and schedules again. Outwardly, I am sure the transition will go well. I am halfway to becoming a veteran. Inwardly... I am equally sure you will find me chafing against time-ropes and deadline-chains. The dreams will be nearly unmemorable, the art that I have scattered about my room will be scaled down from life-sized to take-what-you-can-into-class-without-making-your-prof-feel-too-unimportant sized, and I will be who I need to be and a little less of who I want to be. But it is not all so bad, especially after the transition phase.
It really is a good thing actually, when the rebellion and cynicism settles.

You see, my love of aviation has always been from a very artistic point of view. Stories. Adventure. Curiosity. Perhaps, even, love. Even my appreciation of most science comes through a very thick filter of the abstract and imagined...and now I need it to be detailed, linear, mechanical. At it's idealistic height, it really is 'all for a dream's sake.' But the more I do this, follow this rabbit hole, retrain my thinking, and try to live in a world that does not always understand me and which I am sure to misunderstand at least a few times...the more I find out what I am really capable of.

And by that I do not mean by skill... but by design. And not just me as an individual but as one example of human beings as a collective creation. I am going to need to remember this in the coming weeks as I attempt not to drown being immersed in world not yet wholly mine.

changes, requested and otherwise

For some things to make sense, you need a change of scenery. It's unavoidable at times. Your imagination is not always big enough to handle the static. Your muse is not always inspired enough with the same material. Your mind's eye is not always full enough. Often times, I am entirely unaware that change is exactly what I need to get unstuck. Fortunately, I am not the final authority or even the main person in charge of my affairs.

So I wound up in the desert.

I was born there, allegedly. Well, not in this particular desert... but pretty close actually. It is really a small matter of borders and names... how does the government decide where one national 'forest' or park ends for another to begin? Anyway... I was not raised in the desert. Though I love the hot weather and the colors and the sunrises/sunsets of the desert... I love water entirely too much. And mountains. And clouds. And trees. Tall trees. Even if they block some of the stars. But the desert has its beauty (like how far you can see and how amazing that rare storm is) and its things to teach.


It was there that my chalk pastels made sense. And faces made sense. I have not a clue why faces made more sense in the desert, but I know that the colors of pastel that I was working with suddenly just worked.



Color. Texture. Shape. Lines.

It is not that I have arrived. But it is the feeling that now I have somewhere to go. I could not see where I was headed for such a long time. And even though I have left the desert and have no intention of living there; I see beauty from a new perspective. And taking that home with me gives better light to all that I see where I am.

I know I hurt you every time I ask the impossible. I know that you would do it too. That is, if it weren’t... “the impossible.” But I cannot seem to tie back the words with knots or ropes or chains or weights heavy enough and strong enough to keep them from charging out and asking again.

It is hope.

It is foolishness.

It is blindness and I love it;

because seeing how far away you really are is not worth the weight that it brings. And so I love blindness. Because I can pretend that you are right here; and that when I ask you to come, you can.

It is selfishness too.

To hurt you so that I hurt less.
To shut my eyes and speak words that make you open yours that much wider.
To make you the one with the bad news and reality riding on your back for you to deliver...because I chose to forget. I am hoping for a day when we can both shirk responsibility and reality, cross the distance, and forget the gap was ever there. I keep hoping even though I know it to be the most selfish, foolish blindness.

But I love it.

Perhaps, forgive me, more than I love you.

Because, you see, I have to think that if I really loved you more than I loved the idea of you here, I would find a way to swallow those poison words instead of feeding them to you. But I do not. I am trying though, to learn.

And that has got to count for something, right? I mean, it is hard and unwieldy and I do not like it. I think that that is life though; and if the rumors are true, you and I, dear are alive and in this thing called life for awhile. If you could, be patient with me while I learn to love you more than my blindness.

leftovers

These are exactly as labeled: leftovers. thoughts. emotions. ideas. From the last month or more. Mostly mine, I think. Finally grown up and finished, I think. Ah, I lied. The first one ends too abruptly and I know it, but this is my temporary cop out. (and now it has been editted again...)



Here I am stuck again
With eyes so dry
They make the desert weep.

It is not that I do not want to release
And feel the salt water oceans pour down over me,
Just that I do not quite remember how to swim.

At first,
I was waiting
Until I felt safe enough.

But I forgot
who it is
who makes me safe.

And I forgot what a fickle thing
Security can be
to chase.

How do you end a drought
you requested, demanded, created?

How can salt water
possibly make an oasis
of any desert much less me?

Shall I grow
myself a salt garden
with glistening roses and petunias?

But how?
Especially when it feels like
everything that will be watered

must die again.
So I wait
to grow my sparkling garden.

And say always, "tomorrow".

-----------------------------------------------------

I have read about people who have woken up to confront change staring toe to toe with them without warning. And it really does happen like that sometimes. You go to sleep and a strange wind creeps in through all the cracks and takes away the familiar. The more often it happens, the more familiar the feeling is even in its unarguable foreignness. In a way, the more you know this wind, the more foreign you yourself have become.

So when the air greeted me with the first auntumn kiss I had been given in more than a few months, I knew there was more afoot and overhead than cool weather and geese flying south. Fall was coming, sure, or was already here. But it came with a mission: to sweep away the past and pack it away.

Summer was a memory. That season was over. It was being uprooted and thrown out; and not just summer weather, but the life we lived and the people we were then. Fall had crept in and wrapped its fingers, arms, and heart around my fingers, my arms, and my heart.

It is a good thing that change never asks permission. I never would have grown the way I have, to appreciate it and even to love it. As it is, Change just comes, shakes the world, and lies down for a bit--only to fade when the requisite newness and pedantic instability wear off. That is what I wait for, the new normal. Let North settle northerly and let gravity find the ground. Then we who are left can build.