Life Lived

Eleven years seems like a long time ago.  Some 11 years ago a seminal event occurred in my life.  Today.  May 10.  2000.  I'll always be able to track the year because of that. 

Anyway, in no direct relation there are two thoughts I'd like to share on this, a temperate splayed out evening of continual blooming pollen, which, to tell the truth, builds little canals of mucus in my nostrils and flails about under my eyelids like two young lovers over-eager to undress (albeit young lovers covered in microscopic razor blades)  The first thought is simply that I'm more conservative than liberal in my personal behavioral patterns.  That just is.  I'm not extroverted unless I'm around good friends.  I understand perfectly the need to remain quiet.  

Second thought: cue typewriter: I will make it through this year.  It isn't in the distant future that this will happen.  It will be next month.  I'll try to post until my birthday, as promised, daily, and maybe sporadically after that.  I realize that I could have done more research, answered more questions, heighten my level of compunction with some more clearly defined wry wit.  I realize, in short, that I don't always make myself easily understood.  Part of this is due to the fact that I am not always clear myself.  Usually I'm muttering about in the dark.  My one solace is that I can share this blinds-man bluff with a few people. 

Not drinking has made me value my relationships more, while taking me away from friends too.  I'm just not as social as I used to be; I don't pine to walk to cruddy streets of manhattan and feel manic energy blow excess steam out of my peripheral vision.  I truly value my solitary moments.  I try to slow myself down, and to focus.  I realize, too, that the world is not magnanimous.  Anyway, I shall save these tidbits for later.  Suffice it to say that I've absconded away with the true second thought, which is this: our lives are terribly, terribly short.  They whiz by on the ledge of a mad carousel.   Figuring out what we really care about is vital.  They will not close, story-book fashion, without loose ends.  We need not fully develop.  We need not mature.  Our outsides may be burnt thick and insides frozen.

There is nothing that need be; there is, nothing, that need not be.