1 year is 3 decades

there's no way to put anything other than the end as the end. there are no postscripts or epilogues that can continue ad infinitum. there is always a last word, a last period, a last page.

for almost 30 years each day that was supposed to celebrate a beginning felt a little bit more like celebrating an end. and it wasn't a good end. it wasn't a heartwarming conclusion where someone walks off into the sunset, or vanquishes the enemy, or learns, laughs, loves. it was just an end to nothing. a tiny, barely luminescent flame finally extinguished.

but i suppose, like all things, environments can change. what for 20-odd years was one story was replaced by another. a new narrative, a new cover, a new ending. the ending isn't soon now, it's  not a cold, grey sunday in february of 2019. but that's where it began. it wasn't a sunday, but it was cold, and it was grey, and that didn't matter. maybe it never did.

she told me that i wasn't turning 30. that i was really only one. that what had happened was a life i no longer lived, a person i slowly shed. and she was right. i was so fixated on the story being the same, on the end being plotted out in outlines and notes and mental constructions, that i didn't realize maybe it could change, maybe there would be an epilogue, maybe the epilogue would be longer than the story, maybe there was a sequel, maybe there was just more, more, more.

because someone cares now. and maybe i don't, fully, maybe i will never quite view my body as a sanctuary, or temple, or something to protect and cherish. but someone else does. and as she whisked you away from place to place, feeling to feeling, smile to smile, on a day i knew, knew, knew would be my last, no intrusive thoughts entered. just the warm water on my skin of a swimming pool, the sound of my favorite musical, the taste of her lips on mine, and her smile, so bright it showed the rest of the story for me, lighting the way, piercing whatever grey nightmare a michigan winter had thrust on us.

the things you didn't carry

it hit me while driving to work this morning on a friday. it's hit me before, i suppose, but it's surprising every single time. mornings before work were usually sad. i'd drive to elvis depressedly or sufjan stevens or waxahatchee or flatsound or teen suicide or normal state and mope and stare ahead at the blank canvas of a flat landscape dotted either by grey winter clouds or grey crumbling roads, and that would be my morning. and then my evening would be the same. leave work, drive, sad music, home, sad music, white carpet now grey from dust and so many spilled drinks i cant keep track. grey grey grey. everything.

i drove to work today happy. i listened to happy music, i smiled at one point. i've had mornings like this before, but in the last year they've become more common. they used to be relegated to days leading up to trips to far away locasles. now they're relegated to days. the evening before was wonderful, the weekend ahead will be wonderful, and the things i carry on my shoulders seem a bit lighter for once, less suffocating, less heavy. i drive to work with eyes focused not on the grey right in front of me of another cold, snowy day, but on the time when i will be done with work, on the time when i see her, on the time when we can hug and laugh and share in each other's lives. i don't really know this feeling, it feels like i am shedding 20 years of not having it. it's relearning a bike i did actually forget how to ride. it's relearning me, relearning life. i sang the last few lines to a song that played as i pulled into the parking lot at work. the falsetto i can't reach with my limited range spewed "you're stuck in my mind, all the time." nothing truer has been said.

excerpt like a promethean curse

a small chalkboard stand at work is, belatedly most times, adorned with a supposed 'inspirational' quote or idiom weekly. this blog has, at times, taken idioms and deconstructed them in purposely obtuse ways so as to have a pseudo-ironic, deprecatory posts. the stated goal, then, of each elucidation is different; the former, to inspire achievement - the latter, to inspire a sort of perfunctory chuckle or reflection on the silliness of the english language. in the end, however, both the black chalkboard and the white background result in the same foregone conclusion; nobody reads either, nobody is inspired by either, and all continue their slow march towards death.