The First Dance

When you dance for the first time, the world is like a cradle upon the biggest ocean in the universe.

There are no other sounds except the beating of your hearts… and when the wild blaring of the trumpet and the savage boom-boom of the drum bring you back to reality, you get scared and begin to misstep and falter.  Your hands weaken their hold on the rapturous being near you… and you want to apologize to her but the words are stuck in your throat.

Suddenly you become conscious of the staring eyes around you, appraising you with obscene eyes and lascivious tongues… and slowly you lead the beauteous creature in your arms back to her seat.

Then the orchestra becomes a cymbal of crashing noises – meaningless and riotous – and you return to your corner, trembling with cold and sudden fear.

You are pushed back to reality, to the world of puny men and women who are circumscribed by fear.  Then you, too, are among them and one of them, prisoner by their fears an the ugliness of their lives.

You go to the window and lean far out, savoring the bitter taste on your tongue…

The Friends You Keep

If it takes night to make day,

Pain to know pleasure,

Black to make white,

Death to understand life…

Then doesn’t it stand to reason that the depth of our friendships could be measured by the quality of our enemies?

The Unemployed

I can’t let it get to me.  I wont.  Because this week, I lost my job.

Though the one thing bringing me close to the breaking point?  The fact she never returned my call from Sunday afternoon.  Or my text.  Or email.

On that day, it had been two weeks since we last spoke – which also happened to be the first time in three months that I was fortunate enough to see her in person.  As we left, a warm hug was shared and I politely mentioned I would call her.  Nothing too immediate, as I fully understood it was myself that destroyed our relationship and it would be “silly” for me to run back to what we had.  But there was not a single thing that made me believe we wouldn’t see or even speak to each other in the coming weeks.  I mean, is that too much to ask?  Simple communication?

And that is why my joining the ranks of the 9.1% of this fine country is barely registering on my emotional scale.

The Act of Respiration

In these times, to take one’s breath away is not seen as an act of stealing and rarely looked down upon – despite how cavalier robbing an individual the chance to enjoy oxygen might be.  It is to recognize the actions of someone had been so monumental that it left another stunned.  Surprised.  Breathless with astonishment.  We all must inhale and exhale through our day-to-day lives in order to continue on to the next, but those moments where a fellow human says/does something to truly stop time – that we look back and smile.  With not just our lips but with our heart.  With our love.

Quite a few times as a child I was left breathless and not at all for the positive reasons mentioned above.  My lung’s hated me, my sinuses looked at me with despair and my pharynx on a few different times filled up with enough liquid to sink ships.  Over the years, I am left unable to count on my hands the number of different doctors I have visited, the drugs I reluctantly tried, the hopes and dreams that fell with each horribly written prescriptions.

It is with my past experiences that I have decided to go back to school in April of this year with the intention of becoming a respiratory care practitioner, eventually making my way towards otolaryngology.

With this, I can prevent others from going through similar troubles as I have in the past – allowing them to breath when there body tells them otherwise.  Though, if they ever find themselves breathless from the words of a loved one, I shall allow them to remain as so…

The Single-Use

It was a productive weekend, to say the least.  My house – cleaned.  My car -  tossed the out-of-state license plates away in favor of more “legal” Washington plates.  My health – all checked up and in okay shape, thanks to my friendly new neighborhood doctor.  Though for some reason my body managed to reject such a positive bill of health and decided to twist my stomach a new one, preventing me from making it into work today.  A blessing and a curse, perhaps – as with my free time I came across a disposable camera that had yet to be developed.  Was it filled with secrets?  Maybe.  But I was almost certain that it contained images ripe with the beautiful relationship I once had.  Images that would undoubtedly remind me of her smile, her scent, her laugh.

And they did.

With the advent of digital photography, there is something oddly enjoyable about seeing actual film photographs.  Too often we are graced with the glorious, pristine reproductions of our life through a certain number of megapixels.  Much like a vinyl record, film gives photographs a sense of warmth not seen before.  It’s… humbling.  The disposable camera is a very user-friendly method of allowing such feelings to be captured by anybody – tourist, family, student and even a significant other.  After it’s done it is simply a matter of getting the pictures developed while saying goodbye to the camera that you will never see again.  With developed film in hand, nobody gives a damn about the camera.  They are there to relish in the memories printed before them.

I am fairly certain I know exactly when most of the pictures were taken on this recently discovered time capsule.  2008 was the year and the time was right around when my mother and brother came to visit – and to meet my girlfriend for the first time.  We all had a tremendously good time seeing the sites of the Seattle, enjoying the wonderful food and even just spending time talking.

The picture that brought the biggest smile to my face, would be one taken by her in my car while we were driving down the road.  I have the look on my face that screams, “Hey! I’m trying to drive but I’ll make time to emit a goofy smile just for you!” while she has the pleasantly, well-put-together smile that says, “I’m in love.”

I miss that.

I wish I hadn’t treated our relationship like a disposable camera, throwing it away when it was out of exposures.  If we are ever to find our way back together, I’ll remember to bring extra film.

The Candlelight

A candle loses nothing, by lighting another candle...

I am blind
My eyes
Are
Covered
From
The
Outside
For I have lied, now all
There is left for me
To do is hide
Take in a deep
Breath, I lift
My head
For I am a new man
And I arise from my bed

This is all there is, I can see that now
I have to be careful with it, now it’s been found
So fragile, but powerful, this is the light
Of my destiny stay with me, through every night

“Candlelight” – Imogen Heap

The Run

Today, I started running.

Not from anything or any person, or even to get to a certain location.  I began to run because it is an act of physical exertion that allows me the ability to keep my stress down and a majority of the negative thoughts at bay.  All that encompasses me during those thirty minutes are the pitter-patter of my own feet and the music trapped inside my headphones.

A paradise from thought.

As the run comes to a close and my body is left exhausted, my mind races back to the emotional reflection of another act of running I had no intention of beginning.  Much like a coward, I ran from her.  I ran from what was comfortable.  I ran from the future.  Simply enough: I ran.  With that thrown out in the open, I believe Mr. Springsteen said it best when he sang:

I want to know if love is wild,
Girl, I want to know if love is real…

“Born To Run” – August 25th, 1975

The Beginning

This…

… will be good for me.

Because the externalization of my emotions is state of mind my limbic system has been absolutely dying to initiate for years.  For some inane reason or another, I have lived with the thought that keeping everything to myself was a good idea – a safeguard against possible humility.  That I would be happy if all negativity was shoved under a rug.  But there is only so much that such a tightly woven piece of fabric can conceal.  A truth I deeply wish I had know before – way before, I made that mistake.

“The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

And I did something.

Something terrible.  Something heartless.  Something I excruciatingly regret.  Of the eight thousand, seven hundred and seventy-seven days I’ve spent breathing in oxygen on this planet – it stands tall as the single biggest mistake I have ever made.  Selfish was I for not even possessing a concise reason as to why I jumped to such conclusions and shattered such a wonderful thing.  My negative thoughts manifested inside and destroyed all logical thought, leaving me seemingly no choice but to act on imprudent speculation.

I broke her heart.  And as time passed, broke mine.

It is finding the tools necessary to mend both that is the reason behind creating this blog…