Summer-sick delirium. Sky-high nightlight. Chilled-sweat cocoon.

Too aware for dreaming, I find myself in a flat-grey foundry. Edges glowing molten.

Envisioning a young, will-be mother who doesn’t realize I’m just a time traveler. An inter-continual tourist.

I don’t fill her in. Let her, uncharacteristically, close the range. Keep my distance.

She, too, finds herself nearly alone. Among new and intimidating strangers. Exposed, unlike me, to their immediate veracity.

I’ve seen them age. Soften. Know better than to believe they can hurt either of us.

Little more than a potential consequence of choices yet to be made, I am happy to extend the invicibility of my irrelevance. Or, perhaps, just impossibly practiced.

It could be reflex.

“He sounds nice,” I echo. “And who doesn’t have some baggage?”

Any hint of ominous irony long sinced divorced from my disposition. Intrigued by the possibility that this could all be a paradox.

Awakened, muscles trembling, head throbbing.

Day looming.

Forged impenetrable.

Cutting to the heart of the matter.

Adventure writing is not only what this project needs to be, but also an activity that will encourage me to ravenously consume the remainder of my days.

This is not a prayer for an impossible dream. As the saying goes, adventure happens when plans take a detour.

And I have no fucking clue where I am.

It’s exciting.

Encouraging.

But, with my writing pants on, it’s all too easy to focus on where I’m not. Instead of letting ideas blossom on the page, I let them nest in my brain. Where their rambunctious progeny convince me to genuinely pursue the realization of whatever experience I’m imagining.

No matter how ridiculous.

A couple weeks back, I was trying to figure out a way to flirt with a young woman who sometimes works the coat check at a venue I attend on an infrequent, but nevertheless recurring, basis. I have a standing rule against hitting on service staff, but fuck it. Rules are made to be broken.

Coincidentally, I recently bought a fabulously badass jacket, and decided convincing her to take extra-special care of it could be just the angle I needed.

“I know this is a big ask, but is it possible for my coat not to be on top of the pile of coats that everyone’s going to be having sex on?”

That, of course, being the coat check cliché.

“Somewhere in the middle would be fine.”

Fortunately, for both my reputation and my jacket, there was no coat check that night. She was selling beer instead, and I had nothing specific prepared for that topic.

Turns out we attended different programs at the same arts school.

Not exactly sure where I should have gone with that, if anywhere at all. It was an enjoyably scenic detour on an already interesting ride.

I’m not concerned with the destination.

She dances down the sidewalk, as the sun behind her rebels against the horizon.

Smiles at you.

Maybe you return the smile, and she compliments you on your jacket.

She likes the colour. A faded army green that blends seamlessly with the ever-resilient avenue.

You let her know it was a Christmas gift from your father. Maybe feel a little guilty. Wonder if she’s had the good fortune to receive many of her own. Wonder if her father knows how she’s getting by. If he knows her at all.

Wonder if you’re just a total asshole for making such commonplace assumptions about an obviously nuanced individual.

There’s nothing to do but lend her an ear.

“I got eight pieces of crack in my pocket I gotta get rid of.”

Genuinely sympathize with her hustle.

“Hope you can move that shit.”

Exchange one last smile.

Feel pretty damn confident that people are all right.

Fuck the details.

It’s a damn shame I haven’t devoted more of my life to reading books. My days are full of random, time-consuming events that leave little space for longer narratives. Accompanying a friend to a book store to hear a collection of other people read from their books, for instance.

By the time I showed up, the crowd was pushing shelves aside. It was standing room only for five readings.

During a poignantly joyful passage, I had to choke back some tears. And then calm down a boner during an alarmingly erotic one.

I met both challenges with masterful composure. In the face overwhelming emotions, chillin’ the fuck out is a must.

Although, in retrospect, I should have taken time at the end of the evening to express these feelings to the authors responsible for eliciting them.

“I almost cried” is probably praise so cliché as to be almost insulting. Almost. Without attempting to explain that I would have cried had I not been in public, because obviously I’m too insecure to cry in public—unless maybe it’s in a dark movie theatre and I think I can get away with it—the whole gesture is just qualified right into insignificance.

Thanks for coming out.

However, “Blood began rushing into my penis” is so apparently crass as to be assuredly uncommon. Startling in its objective bluntness. Weird enough to be accepted as genuine.

Is it inappropriate?

Or is it just life imitating art?

The words from your page, echoing through your voice sent me right out of that packed basement. I was neither the bashful giant nor the sultry palm reader. Rather, I became their experience.

It was so magnificently real that I had to will myself away from it by focusing on a shelf of full-colour science books written for elementary school children.

Shift my left leg slightly forward.

Maintain a level of decorum becoming of such an event.

Spend the rest of the night feeling isolated and immature. Not ashamed of what I experienced, but lost in awesome adoration of such a superior and skillful manipulation of this curious craft.

I’m going to need to make time to read that book. And make sure I’m wearing comfortable pants when I do.

I spent my Saturday night with a friend on the precipice of a hefty breakup. One of her many concerns was the power dynamic in her plummeting relationship.

I really had nothing to say on the matter, because that’s not an aspect of relationships I tend to consider.

Like…

At all.

This could be why my last one fucked up so badly. A part that I didn’t even realize existed was broken.

There’s one thing the other half of that said to me back in December that’s been rattling around my heart since then.

“I think I loved you.”

I have just assumed that I should be reciprocating that sentiment. But I don’t share those feelings.

I know I love you.

I might not be happy with you. I might not trust you. I may have lost most of the respect I had for you. I might know that you can’t be in my life.

Even if you wanted to be.

But the notion that any of that should change my most simple, essential and absolute feeling for you is blatantly apocryphal.

I can’t pretend otherwise.

Now, I concede that my beliefs about the nature of love are, perhaps overly, informed by spiritual conceptions of the subject. Christianity’s agape and Buddhism’s metta, in particular. These are simply the core of my understanding of love, and regardless of its manifestation, I will always cultivate it from this.

Love doesn’t come and go. It’s not a delicately tenuous condition that needs to be constantly and carefully maintained. It’s a robust truth that nurtures us, even when we neglect to nurture it.

unconditional

infinite

powerless