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November 15, 2006
you
there's someone out there now, finally.
i don't know the future, i don't want to force one, but for the first time in i don't know how long, i see a future i want to be in.
she's doing the hard things in this. she's fighting doubt and history and fear, and she's facing the inevitable consequences of it, that someone's going to be hurt.
i'm ashamed that i've ridden a roller coaster of my own construction, not hers, the past few days. but every time i disbelieve, like even tonight, there she is, sometimes moments later, making me feel foolish by making me feel happy. she's teaching me the nature of faith and hope again. and, the more i believe in her, the more i believe in me.
i've done more in this week to right the capsizing boat that is my life than i have in years, because i believe, because for some reason, even seeing everything, dark and light, she believes.
you're out there, and i want you close, but i won't tell you that right now, because i shouldn't. but, the things i write here seem to have become this odd intermediary world where we exist together, so i'll just tell you here - i don't know what's going to happen, but i'm here, and i'm alive again, and i want to be for you what you're becoming for me. if that's not to be, then i don't know... but thank you for this time, and for helping me uncover this hope, and this feeling.
Posted by Rob at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2006
we lay things down...
we lay things down and leave them behind sometimes, don't we? we have to take something else up in our hands, on our backs, on our minds, and we lay down what we are already holding. maybe we lay it down gently, smoothing it out on the grass. maybe we drop it carelessly and unceremoniously.
and sometimes, we come back across what we had lain down, and maybe we don't miss them enough or realize what we chose to lose until we run across them again.
i am back at halcyon, where i used to sit and write, where i used to work, the beginnings of the unplanned bold experiment, the beginning of the attempted end of one life, beginning of another, affirmation of the one that should have been. no, not just working at a coffeeshop. the people i met here unknowingly reacquainted me with, and just outright taught me, about what mattered. amelia, amber, leora, adam, eric, melody... i would leave a world of lawyers and bureaucrats and come to work with people who were still young and had the world ahead of them, and while they might all each have their own, very different sort of pretensions, they weren't the same i had always seen and unfortunately learned at westlake high school, with ambitious parents, at the university, at law school, in all the places i've worked since, all those places and people where i started to and continued to lose bits of myself at an ever-increasing rate over the years.
they almost all had college degrees, in art history from vassar, theology from the university of minnesota... they all, without fail, read more than me, the english major and alleged writer. they painted, photographed, and they showed their arts and hearts to the world. they played music for its own sake. and despite the decade or more difference in our ages, they found common ground with me and accepted me, often revealing that ground to me, too, bits of me lost, unknown, hoped for, buried under the years and lies and the brittle, flaking shale of the half-realized dreams of other people.
i used to write here. before this, i went to fado's, of all places, to sit in a certain corner and drink and write, first in a notebook, then on the computer. it's where i began writing again.
then i moved to halcyon, then i worked here, and still continued to come here to write when i wasn't working. i'm here at my old spot at the end of the bar, with another lone star. computer glowing before me in the lights that lower at about this time every night, watch on the top of the keyboard, phone, iPod, Eric counting out his drawer to my right. in a moment, he'll look at me, and i'll nod, and there'll be a new lone star.
i'm here again, and again the words flolw out. i feel, and i write it. i hurt, and i write it. i long, and i write it. i am lonely, but my friends, real people, people who have their own flaws, their own pretensions, their own lies, see and know and understand and take me in.
you can go home again. i find this again, laying in the tall grass here before me. life, and love, smooth and patient for me. i pick it up again, and hold it close, as i once did the scarf she gave me the night she was ill, a symbol, a talisman against the uncertain future.
i hold it close, i hold it so close.
Posted by Rob at 06:45 PM | Comments (2)
land of the gods
we can't figure out when this is coming out, but i know i'll be there...
Posted by Rob at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)