Reasons Like Seasons

I apply a woman's smell to everything I touch: The aroma of the winter goddess and bright, chocolate February winds. I clothe myself in control and ---,  an awesome holiday for the lips and flesh. But emotional technology I ignore, the extra romance of tears and cleansing. You are my non-qualified vacation, an eclipse of my mental touch, the threat of nightmares in the sea of discontent, and the inappropriate paid observer. But yet, as the glass sunset beacons me from beyond my common wax mind, in the clouds, I find my path just tangent to the darkest hour.

Sometimes, when I see you, I want to hold you forever in my arms; To give love, and to be loved, are the only ideas my mind can comprehend. But other times when I see you, I am almost afraid to touch, afraid that the spark that follows may engulf me in flames. It is then that I just watch, and explore your world as you exhale, the smoke streaming from your lungs the only sign of the fire that burns inside.

A coworker of mine is getting married next week, and as a ten-year veteran of this institution we call marriage, I felt it my prerogative to offer her some unsolicited advice: When you move in with your husband, there will be things about him and the way he lives that you will hate. These things that you hate will scream at you, drowning out all else, while the many layered things you love about him will only whisper. The constant love of a life is quiet, comfortable, unseen. Listen to the whispers when faced with the screams, and make them the loudest things you hear. Squint at the rest: the problems may not go away, but neither do you always have to see them.

Blog Post 1 In My Distant Youth In my distant youth, one of my very favorite bands was the southern California-based group Something Corporate. I was drawn to them first by a young man, an artist whom I loved and treasured like a precious flame; one I needed to keep warm yet could neither hold nor contain. One day, when I was pulled in more directions than I could count, in my first apartment away from home, he sat me down and said I had to listen to this song. He had it burned on a CD for me, and he loaded it on the old stereo system I had bought with money I collected in high school, and here it is, as I learned to love it, live at the Ventura Theater, sometime around 2002:  https://youtu.be/0NwJWWnn-cw When I used to listen to this song, I would ache: ache for love I wanted more than I could bear, ache for a home where I would have enough room to live; ache to have a dream that I could believe in and call my own. I wanted love, a home, and a dream. Little did I know, th...