Now.

And what could I say that I haven’t already said over and over again? My problem is that I allow myself too much time to think about it.

There are times at which I absolutely CANNOT WAIT ANOTHER SECOND for things to be different. I am so impatient for change that it becomes painful.

And then there are other things that I hold on to with a vice grip. I strangle them.

It is so very easy for people to say that God has a plan — a wonderful, beautiful story for my life. But when I feel THIS way, those kinds of statements seem like great ironies. Like, HA! Joke’s on YOU! And to avoid feeling like a pit of deep, pathetic dispair, I bury my heartache under the sleeves of my skin and the soles of my feet, where I can only feel it if I move a little too quickly. And MAN, when that happens, it hurts — does it EVER. So I end up moving v-e-r–y s-l-o–w-l-y and people mistake that for an extreme lack of motivation.

Listen, people, listen.

I WANT to feel joy in others’ joy. I want to be truly selfless, to feel empathy and genuine compassion. Sincerely, sincerely. Why can’t I do it?? Why can’t I take myself apart, pull the stitches away from my little heart muscle and just find where that REAL love is? The unconditional stuff? It’s gotta be there, right? So where is it?

Practice?

Oh, somebody help me.

Too bad there is such a thing called reality.

Someone said to me just this past evening: Everyone of us has a right to claim, “They can’t understand me and my struggles. No one has suffered in the same way that I have.” Perhaps in a strange way that can bolster us up. Or we can say individuality is such a constant curse; no other human person will understand us and it’s true for many — I can say especially for myself — that we barely understand ourselves. Is understanding so vital? Does it bring peace?

So… sufferings, longings, moments of joy and years of patience. Of waiting. Decades spanning the horizon of — just making it through one day at a time — doggedly but with hope. This is a kind of stubborn hope, wherein the wearisome and heartsore stuff of life is made to fly under the radar, just barely in one’s peripheral vision; there, but not named. Not spoken out loud.

Poignant. Bitter. Striving.

Yet — and yet, there was always, ALWAYS so much purpose to the words, sentences, thoughts you were trying to convey into coherence. You had a single-mindedness to what you meant, what you wanted, and nothing was going to stop you from reiterating your meaning, even if it meant using crazy hand-gestures and your own extreme pattern of body language to put your point across and gain understanding. Like lighting a little spark to the candle of someone else’s brain or finally connecting the dot-to-dot to form a picture that clearly visualized your meaning, the end was satisfying.

But now, today, you have in your possession a well-oiled, well-worn maching of language making. You can spew the finest-formed string of adjectives, nouns and verbs the world has ever seen. At the top of your tongue lie tiny modules of sound just waiting and ready to create the beautiful syllables of structured sentences, refined words, luminous monologues and meaningful conversations.

And yet. Even with all the purpose, meaning, WANTS and NEEDS battering against the back of your skull to tell me with all these beautiful and refined tools of language that you struggled so long and hard to grasp — can you — can I – find the right words to tell you what I think and how I feel?

Why people are so insincere, so single and self-minded and I patiently exercised patience. I understood easily the difference between a glorious heaven and the glorious passions of earth and I easily overcame the weaknesses of simple mortals. It took me merely an afternoon to contemplate and conquer the imitations and deceptions of intellectuals.

I blinked

And a sparrow flew down and dropped divine inspiration into my open palms.

I gave barely a whisper of command and the wind rose up and shoved clouds away from the sun to warm my skin.

A synapse snapped in my brain and a seraphim with six pairs of wings all burning rubies appeared to satisfy my hunger for knowledge and conversation.

Because I speak with angels.

In my spare time.

And in this semi-quiet moment I’mdreaming of lonlieness — a genre, a theme of mine.

To be just myself beside a window, a doorway, one deep-blue shadow across the pavement, across the pillow, my own ear pressed against the music that I chose and no one else.

Or pause.

Hold its breath. Then JUMP two, three, four — six! Dead, unexuberant, unnecessary moments in life and then stop. Again. Pause. Recalculate, breathe out and begin again.

No, no, no don’t rewind — don’t make me relive — make me alive!

I want to be awake and collecting moments, handfuls of them, armfuls. Enough to make a giant leaf-pile to leap into. Yes, the imagery comes easily into your spectacular imagination. Can you see the times I collected fly up into the air and sprinkle down around me? I can reach out my fingers and SNATCH

one in particular, turn it in the palm of my hand to watch it glitter as it catches the light and shove it into my mouth and swallow. It slides down my throat and then spreads like something precious and severely painful, shooting through my veins, agonizing around the endpoints of my brain, down my spine and breaking through my fingertips.

NOW.

Am I different? Is this life any different? Have I succeeded in finding — is my long weary journey winding down?

Absolutely

Not.

So I open my eyes, look about me, shake my finger at time — though its not your fault — and now breathe. Recollect. I close my eyes and force back the evil intentions of existence to keep them from finding a home in my thoughts.

Instead I plant a tiny, tiny seed of fool’s gold in my mind, carefully tricking myself to believe the thing that keeps me going. That out there, far away, is something better. And it could begin at any moment.

It is quite, quite small.

And like all small things, it sits in the middle of a gigantic, empty space, all alone, where the light touches it just right and shadows outline and exaggerate it across the floor.

That is the difference between it and me.

It loves to be the center of everyone’s attention, absolutely adores being superficially fascinating.

But I shrink away from the spotlight, I shrivel under people’s gazes. I know that under the harsh moonlight my features will stand out in unpleasant relief — the shadows will distort and define every aspect of myself that I try to keep hidden.

That is why I am looking for someone. I am looking for someone who dwells on the periphery, like me. A someone who sees through the skin to something deeper, mysterious, but undyingly attractive.

I am looking for someone who sees me.

Today it could have been a secret affair, not a breath worked into paragraphs of promises and lifted spirits. Too, too bad. It’s the start of a random compromise, a treaty with my broken soul in the sunshine.