waiting for the sun

After graduating I moved back to Springfield and committed myself to my family. I chose to stay with my grandmother in the last years of her life. This was my contemporary familial responsibility and my great pleasure out of love for my grandmother. In the past, a poor farmer boy living near a coast would often join a ship screw as a cabin boy or sailor to earn enough to take care of his family. Well, I joined a crew via the working world. I wanted to support myself and my family. Along the way I heard the siren’s call.

I became enamored with my siren, my beautiful, talented siren. An experience both amazing and incredible.

And then… I was shaken out of my stupor. The image broken, the mirage began to fade, my utopia came crashing down as a silent isolated Hiroshima in my head. Anger, sorrow, pain, frustration, betrayal, and other mixed feelings and combinations of feelings I didn’t even know existed or have a name for.

After it was over. I spent two months inside dwelling in darkness. nose to the grindstone, I buried myself in work and tried not to think about anything other. Nights laying in bed staring at the ceiling alone with my thoughts were dreaded. Time can be funny. Einstein agreed time is relative. I doubt heartache was considered in his equations. It is a scientific fact that time slows down the faster we move. Sounds silly, but it has been proven (check out physicist Brian Greene's Fabric of the Cosmos: Illusion of Time). My mind was moving too fast lost in thought. Two years of hoping for numbness passed strangely in the span of those two months. Two years alone. Two years of longing to forget the bad while hoping to preserve a glimmer of the good. The difficulty in this is finding the good that is not intertwined with the bad. Many are merely a path to other related bad memories. Memories tend to fall that way. I believe that memory is associative by nature. The more associations and connections, the stronger the memory. She was everything, so her memories are very strong. Ah! There is the rub! Not quite Billy Shakespeare’s mortal coil, but perhaps a contemporary social coil instead. We pick-up and carry many social coils. They are jobs, responsibilities, the roles we accept.

I accepted the role of boyfriend, i.e. a sailor to my siren. Now I’ve spent time drowned at sea beneath the tempest waves waiting to crawl out on a new beach and take air into my seemingly long since dead longs. I’ve waited for the day that the sun would once again warm my body and relieve me of the corpse-like cold.

From time to time I still dream of her, that past life, waking entangled together in our bed, in our townhome… Then I realize the dream is but a shadow cast upon the wall of Plato’s cave. Perhaps it’s just another allegory to confuse me of what is real. It is painful to wake from a warm dream of coupling to realize you lay now in a cold bed alone. It’s as if the sun never rises. Never shares its warmth. I keep waiting for the sun…

the long awaited dawn

I know I’m closer however to reaching a new dawn. Aurora, the morning light must be near to cresting my world’s horizon. I trust I’m closer because I am finally beginning to look again outwards with fondness towards the opposite sex. There seem to be a very rare few who can draw my attention with like-minded pursuits.

There is one whom I’ve admired in her own personal journey. She endeavors towards worthy self-discovery. For this, I admire her greatly. It was great to take her hand into mine one night and pull her into a friendly embrace after having so much time pass since our last meeting. It had been 2007 the last time I hugged her. I had lived a lifetime of experience since then and so had she. Now we were approaching a crossroads, a time of decision-making to determine our next adventures and what responsibilities to accept along the way.

We met briefly as long lost friends, but it was enough time for shared conversation, a bicycle ride through town, and a drink. It was good and new as I sat beside her in that booth. The thought of how nice it is to sit close to another person. The simple delights of a foolish boy dwelling on thoughts of holding the hand of the girl next to him. Dwelling perhaps too long on an act most would ignore, the simple act of the boy’s knee gently nudged against the girl’s leg under the table. Simple, probably nothing intended, but exciting nonetheless.

It is amazing to once again enjoy the embrace of another and feel your heart and breath meet the pace of another. It felt wonderful to hold her closely and finally touch her cheek to steal a kiss. I could have held her for hours quite happily. The embrace was blissful. I take it as a good sign that perhaps my lifeblood is ready to once again flow into my heart.

Some people you just want to pull closer to yourself. They inspire you to become a better version of yourself.

Sing to me o' Muse...

Sing to me o’ Muse. Sing of the man of twists and turns. Tell me of Odysseus’ modern progeny. A traveling soul not long for any one place, but happy to belong everywhere his feet fall.

Blame not the Siren, for she knows not what she does. She cannot help herself. It is her nature to be a destroyer of men. Her beauty draws us in. It hides all deprivations, paints a picture of a personal utopia, and is perhaps the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced. I cannot call it false. The moment, as a sailor helplessly lost in love, is the realest thing you know. One cannot help but jump over the side of the ship and swim towards the song till your heart bursts or your body is battered by the rocks and crags ashore. But Ah! The pleasure of that self-destructive swim…

Transitions

I find myself again in betwixt. A constant form of juxtaposition. But that's life I suppose. A Heraclitian flux in waiting. I dwell on the past while looking towards the future. I think about my only previous love while trying to unburden my heart so I may give someone in the future a chance at a fair relationship unplagued by my past.

Sometimes trapped in my thoughts, I find time passes slowly or not at all. A lifetime in memories of yesterday and of all the possible tomorrows. I imagine many futures. I still stir from waking dreams of those futures. Having spent considerable time imagining a life together with one woman, it is increasingly difficult to imagine something otherwise.

However, dreams are often shattered by reality. Many ancient Greeks believed that life was made up of opposites. That is, that every thing existed with opposing properties. Perhaps opposites are the core of empiricism. We only know something in relation to other things. Yet the law of noncontradiction states something either is or is not. This is simple enough. It is dangerous to get lost in the semantics of silly thoughts like this and yet this is my mind in many moments. Why not put down my books and upgrade to a sweet universal remote control? Then I can watch tv and not need to think so much. Sometimes that is nice, but it's not always my cup of tea.

So now that I've realized and acknowledged my digression, I can return to my original thought which prompted me to grab my netbook and begin typing...

I am in Italy. A stranger in a strange land... you grok?

Last night the father of my host family told me that I am too formal. I think to much about things instead of just letting them happen. Apparently, it's not the normal Italian way of life. I suppose people find it strange that I'm constantly observing wide-eyed, asking questions, and taking in as much as I can around me. For Italians, the surroundings are nothing special.

...........
Much like when I was in Ireland and freaked at the first proper castle I saw. The Irish on the coach with me had no idea what could be so fantastic that had my pointing out the window. "Something in the sky?" they asked. 'No! There!" I said. "What?" they asked as they continued to search the horizon for something amazing. 'The Castle!' I shouted. "Oh. That?... So what, those are everywhere." they said.
...........

I suppose it's easy to become desensitized to your surroundings over time. Most Italians act too cool for school. The problem is that I love school and am constantly happy to learn more.

I'm learning here. Not the things I expected, but I am learning nonetheless.

Ne Panique Pas!

ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν: