Blogomattic

Just thought I’d share the video my Facebook and Twitter folks got to see.

I am living in, what seems to be, an eternal state of frustration orchestrated by the kind of mental road block that has the capacity stop an M1A1 tank with ease. I feel trapped within the confines of my own mind and body and limited by my chronological progression. My heart wants to make so much more progress than it has, yet my mind is unable to move forward with my heart as it is jumping about in time at will. I have tried, so very desperately, to stop it. I can’t. When it finally returns I have that sense of fading that is quite the opposite of a developing Polaroid. I am held back by it.

When will I move forward with every part in toe? Why do I go back? Its not even like I go back to when Rachel and I were together. In fact, that is rare. The latest I go is November 2003.

Damn it. It’s happening. I’m going to bed.

Maybe Doctor Manhattan, of Watchmen fame, had it right when he said that time is simultaneous.

Another slow day at the office allows my mind to wander, which is a scary thing in itself. A solitary white puff of a cloud drifts by rapidly. It resembles one of the 5 basic shapes of McDonalds McNuggets. You know, that one shaped like an Ugg Boot. Death Cab for Cutie is rocking the iTunes shuffle, the server is humming along, and my email inbox is empty. A small flock of little birds, finches I’d wager, are frantically darting about in the sky. This is a familiar scene. I look past the little rocket like birds to see a hawk overhead. It’s, really, just another day.

The past two weeks have changed so much for me… but in an odd way. I’m not sure how to articulate it, but it’s all so different.

I have decided to be the fraud I have always been.  This agnostic is going to pretend to be the Christian he was and wants to be. It’s, really, the best I can offer in that regard.

In all seriousness I am considering giving up on design. My heart isn’t there anymore. The past six months to a year I have been really debating my field choice. Sure, I love to design, I love to code, I love color, shape, form, composition, value, tone, and all that comes with it. But I am not that person anymore. I’m just not. Being unattached, I just find myself wanting to revert to old dreams. I want to write. If my life is going to be unanchored, why should I live in one place and maintain a conventional job? Before Rachel, I never wanted to stay in one place and I wanted to do what made me happy, not what was practical. I am thankful that those tendencies were instilled in me by her, I still love that she showed me that I could positively adore that concept of having a family and providing for them. Time, however, has allowed those things to go away. I don’t want any of that any more. If I decide to finish school, I am setting out immediately afterwards. Lately, the want has been to be a simple deckhand on a fishing boat or something. I can’t stay. This is not my world anymore.

I know my apparent presence has, at best, appeared spotty. I delete my tweets at the end of the day, I keep nothing on my Tumblr for more than a day, I rarely go on webcam, and I pretty much keep away. I’m not really comfortable with any of that stuff anymore. I talk to my friends, go out with them, and maintain slightly more private communications. And, yes, I remove posts from this blog. It just doesn’t matter.

Sleep. Ha, I don’t remember what it’s like to sleep. The last time I did that was February and it was drug induced. Awake and dreaming seem to overlap so much that I have no idea how to tell the two apart.

---

I think I have said too much.

You are like a piece of sea glass. You cut me and then were cast off. All of your edges have been smoothed away and you have become smaller as the sands of time have worn you from my memory. You are nothing but a relic. But I still have the scar.

- Black Book 6

So many people enter our lives as whole bottles. We experience the contents, however much or little that may be, and the bottles are often cast out as trash. Some bottles are held onto as souvenirs. Still, some experience another fate. Those bottles are shattered. Those glass pieces fall into the beach sand. That sand is the very same that flows through the narrow passage of the hourglass.

Time. Time eats the glass away. The edges smooth out, the pieces becomes smaller, and those bottles we knew become just another remnant of what was. But those remnants are never accurate representations of what was. They are partial shards, but even those shards are incomplete. The sand will, with time, wear every piece away to nothing. Our memory is like those shards; fragmented pieces of a whole. The older we get the more the memories disintegrate.

Some of us are no more than cracked bottles on our own, held together by our own shape. We can never be repaired, we just have to be more careful. The earlier we crack, the longer we live in fear of breaking. Some of us have already lost pieces, but are still mostly whole.

In the end we are all breaking. Some of us faster and more violently that others. Our shards will be worn away… and we will be nothing.

---

This isn’t the glamorous post I wanted to return with.

File Date: 06/13/2005

It was the morning after their first time together and the day after their wedding. His eyes gradually opened to reveal a familiar face that he had never woken up to before; his wife’s. She was far past waking up; he could tell she had been watching him sleep for an hour or more, maybe all night. He felt her bare skin, warm and soft, against his own. He could tell that the way they fell asleep last night was how she remained, she was completely natural and pressed firmly up against him so as to let him feel every detail of her gloriously exposed body. He treasured that feeling, as he had always wanted to wake up to a beautiful smiling face and in close connection with his wife.

Beneath those stark white sheets they lay intertwined, such as a wisteria weaves its way through a garden trellis. They were linked, and connected at the most intimate of levels. They remained tangled within each other in splendid nudity for many moments, not saying a single word or making even the slightest movement so as not to disturb the serenity of the surroundings and the connection that was present on so many levels.

While this moment seemed an entire lifetime, it had to have been only a moment. At the end of the perfect moment came the words he had longed to hear since he was old enough to want a bride. “Good morning, my husband,” she said with the most sincere smile and love he had ever felt come from her heart through her throat and off of her soft lips.

The smile crept across his face as he searched every part of his mind trying to find words to do just to the moment, but the only thing he could deliver was, “G’morning my beautiful wife.” She blushed and hid her face beneath the covers.

“Maybe” came the slightly muffled voice from sheets over her face.

“No, you are; both beautiful and, finally, my wife.” He responded with all the love he could put behind the words.

For the next few hours they remained, unmoved and silent, bound together by words, by a promise, and by a commitment that could be seen by the rings they wore. The rings, yes, the only things they wore that entire morning and the only things they needed to show a bond only they knew about.

----

I have found a journal from 2003 with posts in it. For the first time ever these are going public. Rachel didn’t even get to read them when we were together… mostly because i thought they were lost.

• January 2003
• February 2003
• March 2003
• April 2003
• May 2003
• June 2003
• July 2003
• August 2003
• September 2003 

How is it that things aligned so well and fell apart so dramatically?

Old Poetry

The stupid things we say and think.

You’re a thief of hearts,

And taker of love.

I fell into you,

And went right through.

I held the ledge

But lost my grip,

And fell into you,

And went right through.

You opened the door to my heart,

And walked on in,

And you got into my mind,

And went right through.

It’s almost 3am. I have just gotten home after being out since 4pm yesterday. My eyes are heavy, but I am still riding a second wind. The drive home from Ardmore was odd. A part of my spirit felt like it had returned somehow. Death Cab for Cutie is playing at a mid-level volume, all the windows are rolled down, and I feel like I am the only one awake for miles. I lay my head back and let my mind wander. I have driven these roads many times, focusing is, by no means, necessary anymore. I look out my window. I am overwhelmed. I can see every speckled star on the nighttime canvas. I remember how, as a child, I wanted so desperately to be among those stars.

The urge to stop and gaze for hours on end was great. Had I not been alone, I would have stopped and watched the heavens move above. But I am… and sharing that experience is what will make it wonderful… so I let it slip away.

---

The wind is changing.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost, 1923

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

— Derek Walcott

---

This poem graces the first page of the prologue of The Time Traveler’s Wife. I have read the poem over and over countless times, entranced with how much I identify with it. Somehow, I feel like I have failed to give my heart back to myself, though. To be honest, I don’t know how to handle something that is so damaged… so broken. A heart so mishandled by me, God, and others. Furthermore, I don’t readily recognize the me that has arrived at my door.

My weary self is beaten. Weighed down, heavily, by the constraints of the broken heart and exhaustion of fighting battles alone. He is without a god, without hope, and angry. He is me. He is my past and, yet, he is undoubtedly my future. He’s older and worn in. This is a time where I intersect myself. Three paths cross simultaneously. The future, the past, and the present together. Time is finally on my side. We discuss all the places I have been, and the places I will go.

This is the one time that I can actually change the past. Or, my future self (that I can see ahead) can help present me change paths. But do I? Can I head my own advice? Should I? Explaining this is a challenge. But it’s something I think about.

All I know for sure is that time is limited, and that something needs to happen soon. “The world will not have me long,” is a thought that popped into my head in a rather prophetic tone last night as one of many thoughts that crossed my mind in the space that occupies the boundaries between consciousness and sleep. My time is short.

---

The clock has stopped.