It's frozen and forbidding outside...
But I remember the adventures...
So huddle back into the furs...
Settle in to wait out the winter.

Quiet in and out and oh so still...
Wiggling, thumping, jumping stranger tickling me awake.
What new colors will next season's adventures be?
With him and him and you and me?

This trust shit is hard.  At least the maintenance of it.  Going so long with suspicion under a flag of old hurt just won't leave ya be.  Tics of this or that...  Oh, shut up and leave me alone old stones.... the wall you built is full of cracks and I can't even get a good breeze from sitting on top of it.

But they keep tic tic ticking along and they tire me.  But you gotta keep your wits about you or rote-learned instinct will kick in and kick the shit out of the fragile peace you've built.

I wonder often if this peace will last if we sit and take a breather for too long.  Gotta get a move on.  Gotta get it moving.  Gotta kick the dust from this tomb from our feet... Can't dance with old ghosts too far from their homes, can you?

And my client's in the hospital.... been in there a week.  So I'm having this dillema of whether to stick this out and wait for her or to move on with my career change like I've been wanting to.  Moral dillema I guess.  I'm the only person they want working with her and they're like family... but I have GOT to get moving or I'm going nowhere.

BAH!  It's not bad.  Not bad at all.  It's just the tic tic ticking of that old rocks clock I hear getting closer and closer with each step we don't take.

tic tic tic

Time's running out, baby.

You ghosts of failures past... get the fuck behind me. 
I don't need you anymore to warn me off of the twists and turns I could take.
I trade you shades of sorrow for shades of grey to wrap myself in.
You tangle my feet and throw me in the direction your nature chooses.
I don't need you anymore, I choose the shades of grey.
I choose the shades of grey.
They've been waiting for me to dance with them.

Oh, little god don't fail me now.

I found it.  The air.  It was there for the taking.

The sun found the choice and turned his face to the moon.

She's gonna shine back to him.

For the sun and the moon for the sake of the son.

For now. 

Till there isn't a need for a push of the pull.

Gravitational pulls warring with the ever exploding universe.

Black galaxies... you can't have us.

Any of us.

It feels like I've just recently awakened to find the sunshine's on the other side of the world. 

And I'm sitting in bed with the sleep still in my eyes begging the sun to rise again.

Sunset's a tragic hour to get out of bed when you expect to find the light.

There's still the whole trip around the world before it warms you again.

If your bones ever warm again.

Nighttime's an intimate span, when the world can't see to get in and hurt, and you can't see well enough yourself to build your walls.

You can touch things in the night that vision would render unreachable, hold the untouchable.

Feels like when I blow out the candle I blow out all hope of the light returning now.  Is it better to blow it out so that it can be lit later... or let it burn down in one hot melting mess...

Metaphors.  Poetry cannot replace reality.  An analogy doesn't lend all it's truths to life's broken dances, shutting out the steps we're trying to trace.

It's all a choice...  There are things we can't choose, and things we cannot get rid of or get over...  But we can choose how to deal with them, if we let them force us to react then we're doomed.  There's never one path.... they may wind around each other and entwine but even if you're forced down a route you can still choose which side to walk on, whether to walk with your eyes to the sky or the ground.

I'm rambling again.

I'm lost.

I'm drowning.

I'm awake and I'm awake and I'm awake and I'm awake.

What do I do with this day with no sunlight?

"Please give me time to decipher the signs. 
Please forgive me for time that I've wasted."
-Nickel Creek

Reality... is there just one?  Or does each individual person's perception create a seperate and valid reality?  Which trumps which?  Can it even be measured or validated seeing how no one can truly find truth?  And what IS truth anyway when I don't believe hardly any of us have an absolute grip on the many nuances of our perceptions and feelings... and it's a given that within a group of people witnessing the same event there will be widely differing accounts.

Interpersonally, faith and trust make a big part of accepting individual and group realities I think.  And on the flip side, maybe apathy as to accuracy may even play a part.  The,"Does it really matter in the big picture if it's dead-on" internal argument.

High emotion colors perception, obviously.  To the point of completely internalizing reaction, observation and communication.  We get so wrapped up in our own process that we can't really absorb *more* information. 

And another thing...  Just because we may have valid reasons to be upset or withdrawn doesn't negate another's validity.  There is no 'team' or 'couple' absolute mentality.  Every being has the right to each and every emotion or lack of emotion regardless of the others' status... it's just a matter of consideration and empathy.  And regardless of past 'scores'.  

Interpersonally there can be so much historical and day-to-day detritus that it becomes a vicious balancing scale of tit-for-tat.  Clean the fucking aquarium would you?  No one ever 'wins'.  No one comes out on top.  There can be no real evening of the scores.... because there's no goddamn score board except in our own battered and disconnected boundless minds.  

We many go through our whole lives unaware of the fact that we're basing our everyday monumental or minescule decisions on faulty ground rules.  Residue from parental or childhood bad decisions, expectations or examples.  Ingrained subconscious poisons, eroding our very ability to be true to ourselves and our wishes.  A silent screaming voice yelling "NO!" and "it's just the way it is".  

Bullshit.  It's not just the way it is.  It is not predetermined.  Nothing is mapped out.

That's not to say that a certain series of events or interactions doesn't necessarily lead to a historical conclusion or action.  Disregarding that is a different kind of senseless.  But one can also be trapped in remembering and following THAT set of guidelines.  Pigeonholing.  Typecasting.  Prejudiced decisions and actions.  "Clinging to a past that doesn't let me choose" -McLaughlin  

Fuck that.  No black and white exists except in simple, basic unpersonal truths... and even those are subject to 'trippy' interpretations.  It's grey, we're grey.  Grey toned with colors.  The absolutes rarely exist, I believe... and reality and even basic personality, preference and tendency can change on a dime.  We're fluid creatures... and barring psychosis, what allows us to change so rapidly is a conscious and willful awareness of every second of our lives and the choices that are available to us.

Every moment, every turn of phrase, every expression and touch.  Every nuance of reaction.  It's up to us.  

The only thing that's out of our control is everything external.  Hehe.  Scary, eh?  But freeing if you accept it.  You can influence, which is fucking monumentally important to remember both negatively and positively.  But you can't control.  You can't ignorantly sit back and tell yourself that things are a certain way just because your narrow guidlines predetermine them.

I'm rambling...  But the point here is this.  Be aware.  Be open to accept that all things change, and even if basic truths or facts stay the same... they're still moving in shades.  It never stops, and there can be no pause button.

'Now is blessed; the rest remembered.' -Morrison  

Don't try to even a score that takes so much useless effort to keep up with.  Wasting time tracking back through events and minutae that could be spent participating in the endless options of the now.

It's happening.  Right now.  And that 'now' is already gone.

What's passing you by right this moment?

Grab it.

There's this reoccuring overflowing appreciation for life and what I have, and the knowledge that every choice I make is mine alone.  Especially the minutae of daily life.  Moment to moment it's a thrill to be conscious of my actions and choice of words.  Simple, odd... perhaps.  A little chewed around the edges, oh most certainly.  But living life in a fog for so long and wasting what I had makes what is left and the potential priceless. 

Even, or perhaps especially, the choice to love.  Er, act on that love.  I don't think the love is a choice to a certain extent but rather the maintenance and effort one puts into it.  And perhaps it's a third or fourth degree choice if it can't be a first.  As in, oh you can't simply CHOOSE not to love someone... But you can be such a shit as to cause them to neglect you as well and then *poof*  you can't stand each other.  Conversely, a spark maintained with awareness of action and lack of it can smolder into the kind of glowing banked fire that may never quite scorch your eyebrows off, but warms you as long as it lasts.  And if it's tended with enough care and teasing stoking... well, keep the sand bucket near at hand.

Anita Blake put it well when she said something to the effect of, "Passion is a form of love, but it isn't lasting.  If Romeo and Juliet hadn't killed themselves they'd have hated each other in a year."  I've had passion, and it's earth shaking.  Spiritual in its intensity, giddy in the thick of it.  But I'd rather have love.  Don't get me wrong, that once in a lifetime passion was the first savior of my soul... but it can leave you hollow without a foundation.

Moral... it's worth it.  Right now, it's worth it.

And on another level, I wonder how many people are conscious of the world they present to their little ones on a daily basis.  I think that awareness can make or break the little souls that we haphazardly call down in the throes of lust.  Maybe not so much the littles that are planned and welcomed into the world, but the ones born to parents just as lost as they are.  Really, maybe the playing field is eventually level for both sets. 

Anyway, I think it's not just a daily reconnection to our goals, love and hopes... but a moment to moment constantly shifting revelation.  What would Jesus do?  Fuck what Jesus would do.  What would YOU do?  What would you do if you could be you?  What would you do if you could choose how you affect those around you, your thoughts, your very essence?  If you could color your world any shade you want...

If you realized the power in every breath you take, every turn of phrase, every opportunity to color the truth...

What would you choose to do?

I choose to love.  I choose to swirl in grey and deep rose, clear frosty sea green and the warm shifting tones of autumn grass.  I want to be curiosity and grace, and I want it to reflect on my little wolf who howls at the moon with complete abandon at my hip.  I want my colors to wrap loosely around my love and dance with his freely.

Who are you? 

"You better figure it out.  You better do it soon.  It's like the middle of May and you only got till June." ~Atmosphere

When the last soldier came home
Decorated and alone
I saw him at a bar last Saturday night
I said Daddy won't you come here and let me buy you a drink
Tell me what you been through
What you feel and what you think
Why'd they leave you all alone there
Didn't anybody care?
I saw you on the news last night...
And you were on the last. plane. home.
 
He looked me in the eyes and honey I didn't see a thing
'Cept the empty that surrounded him
He could barely recall his name
And he said it wasn't the last. plane. home.
There's still more to bring back here
I just couldn't find their bones.
Three's still more dreams to dig up out there
And then they'll be on the last plane home