draft dec 2010

The crazy part of the season is how the bleak and stark and brutality of humanity stand hand in hand with hope and joy and miracles under a snow frosted pine along the side of the road. The cars are flying by at a breakneck pace and never even see the tree, let alone the beauty of the bittersweet lying crumpled on the ground like yesterday's news.
But that's how it is. We don't see. We don't want to see. We don't let ourselves see.
We prefer deception. We seek it out and create it if we can't find some pre-made in cellophane wrap at the drug store.
You shake your head, trying to lie through it, believing your own lie. It's always, in the moment, easier to believe that the first shock of pain, of reality, of dealing with something, anything, head on, face first is so utterly terrible, the pain so blinding, so scorching, so deadly that it will undo you and so you walk on past. You trick yourself, create your own illusions to live under.
But the weight of it all will crush you alive. Those illusions, those fakes, take your life, slowly and more fiercely than the pain of facing a demon head on will ever be. And the most brutal part is the demons we chose to ignore, the ones we lie ourselves into believing we've faced and conquered, multiply under the cloak of the illusion. Any time we get brave enough to even take a little peek, we feel it stirring and we know instantly how much worse it will be now.
Time made it harder not easier. It wasn't forgotten. It's not gotten over. It's fermented instead. It became more and more powerful and now is eating you alive.
It's hard to live lies and be a shell. It's hard to play a role and be an actor every minute.
It is terror to take off all the lies, the masks and simply be, scars, sins and all, but it's where the freedom lies. Peace is on the other side of that terror.
Life is simply a flip side coin. One side peace the other side bitterness. Everything has it's opposite and we faulted, flawed, broken humans always, always, seem to pick the wrong side, the harder side, deluding ourselves that this is better, this is easier, this hurts less, it harms fewer people. We drive ourselves into being the martyr with a sick sort of righteousness thinking this is what God would have us do.
Maybe.
But I don't think so. That's not the God I meet when I'm in prayer or in my Bible. it's not. God doesn't want me to be a lie that looks all pretty and perfect and Godly and pulled together according to whatever twisted image I have in my mind of what everyone else is holding me up to or what they hold themselves up to or who they think I should be. It's all a trick mirror and smoke screen.
God's not into false images, including our own.
I think God would rather find me down on my face in the muck of my own life, than prissed up in the front of the church claiming to have lived the words in the Book. I think a greater testimony than words would be to live out my life, let everyone see God come and wipe the slime off my face, look into my eyes and say, I still love you. Come home. Come back. Let's begin again. Here is my grace, take it in place of your brokenness.
Far greater I believe. But what do I know.

#142

Time to get back on the pony..15 minutes no stops. Here's the story start:
When the winter arrived he was grateful for
the anonymous way it covered over everything. He was grateful for the way silence was like a cloak over everything. Voices were quieter, people faked kindness and he'd take it. Sometimes fake kindness is better than none and he had little in his life,so fake was just fine with him. The winter brought the snow, the ice. It held beauty in it's starkness. It's crystal, like a nature glass works outside his windows. He lived for the fireplace. The crunch of the snow underfoot and the blanket of snow on the ground. It made the brown and barren somehow seem so much better. The cold was like a constant slap in the face and for now it was what he felt he deserved, needed. It was the season. The holiday part of it was a chore, but it too brought out some fake connections. There were suddenly invitations from people that the rest of the year could have cared less if he lived or died. Now suddenly they wanted him to come to their elaborate homes and eat their cocktail meatballs and drink micro brews he'd never heard of and secretly dumped down the bathroom sink because they tasted vaguely of feet and toilets. He was thrilled and dismayed at the odd cards that filled up his mailbox, strangers really, frightening pictures of someone elses savior, a concept he couldn't grasp, just because he didn't want to, didn't care. He was content in his vacuum, not happy, but content. It was a space all his own and undisturbed. It was his. Very little was his. Everyone was always pulling at him, pushing his head under the water, but in the winter, everyone took a break getting caught up in the glamour of the holiday season. Twinkling lights seemed to make every ones mean flicker in and out. I mean not everyone, there were plenty who simply took this opportunity to be even more bitter and drink harder. But those were not his people. He knew they were not. He quietly kept his bitterness to himself, his drinking done in the dark of his own apartment. There was no need to flaunt brokenness. Somehow it was better savored alone. It's a long way down. He knew it well. He'd been down a long, long item. Almost too long. The winter also offered up the possibility. The ice the snow the storms, tragedy was always right there, waiting behind the next slip, the next car skidding across the ice, the next power failure, the next slip on the ice and skull crushing blow to the frozen concrete. He always hoped a little in the winter. Hoped that his end would come and he would not see another spring. Spring held no promise for him. There was no rebirth in his life. It was just repetitive failings and the spring just rubbed it in that he had failed the winter and not allowed it to finish him. Somehow his luck was wrong and he had let himself come out the other side alive. It was not his plan but somehow it never worked out according to his plan. He loved winter. Looked forward to it. But it always thwarted his plans. When the thaws came he obsessively watched the weather to make sure he'd have one last opportunity. He took advantage of every last winter storm. He was always the one out driving when the weather announcers said if you can avoid it in any way, stay off the roads and indoors. That was a code for him to go get in his car in short sleeves, run it until there was no gas left and look for the black ice on the freeway, but every time, it would clear, it would thaw and he would end up at a Mobil or a Kwik Trip filling up and heading home. In the end, he'd be pulling into his garage, then going into the house and taking a shower reserving him self, stealing his resolve knowing that a spring was coming, just right around the corner. There would be a spring. This winter was just around the corner. The fall days were at their ends. The frost was there now in the morning. He was longing for the bleak to arrive. It was his long lost friend, his comfort in the crystal frozen across the window glass. The lost footing on the sidewalk ice a welcome feeling, that lurch, that letting go and hoping for a skull crunching blow on the frozen cement. This was going to be his winter.

A Draft, Because I Can

Every once in a while I reveal my ignorance, not intentionally, but because something got my attention and I thought I ought to share it. But here's the thing. It seems, I'm not enough.

I'm not Christian enough or American enough. I can't seem to get myself all jacked up and foaming about injustices and sins. I can't get myself into that whole blood thirsty big bad evil that we have to go out and take care of. I can't get into the God wants this and that, the Bible says this and that. It does. I know. I've read the thing. I know what it says. But, I know, there's no but allowed in Christianity. I guess there is in my version. Let's face it, everyone has their own version of Christianity to a certain extent. I think in a little bit of a way, it's supposed to be like that because we're supposed to have a unique and personal relationship with God.

Personally, God doesn't convict me to be on top of politics and world events and sins of others. He does convict me of my own sin a whole lot, so if you don't mind, you can leave that part out of your condemning comments. I know where I'm wrong, more clearly than you ever will, because I live in my own mind and heart. I know my sins. And so does my God.

I'm not able to get on the band wagon about the expense of this or that, how unfair it is to this people group or that one. I can't seem to rile myself up over the way one thing is eventually going to lead to another via slippery slope. I just think, yup, this is one badly broken world full of messed up people needing a Savior.

It seems to me we spend a lot of our time and energy as Christians and Americans being angry. We claim a lot of tolerance, but we really don't have any, we're all about confrontation, condemnation and criticism. We do a great job of couching it in pretty terms, we're great at manipulating language to make the meanest of things sound nice, but really? We're not all that nice. Even in our churches, we'll take a person who wants to be involved in something or another and run them around and around finally convincing them they're not "gifted" in such and whatever. Again. Read the Bible, know that gifting is real.

We even glamorize our hate. Think of all the movies and TV shows and books about clicks and what in essence boils down to bullying. Then we turn it all around and make it righteous by doing a Bible study about how not to raise "mean girls" or whatever is the fad du jour.

And yes. It's human nature. We're a broken people. Got that. But we're not helping ourselves either. Notice I said here, helping ourselves, not condemning someone else.

Ah, whatever. Cast your stones. I'll bear my ignorance.

#37 15 min of junk today

She stared at the envelope lying on the counter. She knew she should open it. she knew that eventually she would have to open it. The answer was inside.

In a way it felt like the key to her future was inside that envelope. Decided by someone else. Someone who didn't even know her. But isn't that just the way this life runs? Someone outside yourself holds all the power.

She knew it wasn't true. What ever was inside that envelope had no real power over her. It just felt that way.

In her mind she knew that this envelope was just a step on the journey or maybe a stop on the journey, but the journey would continue either way. She wasn't going to stand still and stop living if the answer inside the evelope was no. She had made that promise to herself long ago.

She did know, though, that if the answer was no, there was a lot harder road to travel in front of her than if it said yes.

Yes was power. Yes would open doors to opportunities she had only day dreamed about.

No meant climbing all those hurdles again. Walking that rough road.

Yes meant a step in the right direction. It meant she would be able to stop doubting herself for a few moments. She would be able to start believing that it was a valid dream to chase. Yes meant she could secretly say "I told you so." to all those people in her life that laughed in her face when she got brave enough to reveal her dream.

No was a slap in the face. It was the ringing laughter in her ears of all those long forgotten people who told her she'd never be anything in this life. It was a confirmation of the drudgery of the daily grind she was living and the statement that she really should never be expecting anything but the average out of her own life. No meant that there would be no extraordinary moments in her life. No one would ever marvel at her or her life in a good way. They would marvel, to be sure, but in the same way that a person of wealth marvels at squalor.

Yes would be the kick in the pants to begin the process of full out pursuit of a dream long ago hung out to dry in the summer sun on the back portch, forgotten like old flowers and rusted tractors. Yes would mean a justification of all that time wasted over the years. Yes would mean someday she would be someone.

She knew she was someone with out the dream come true in her life, she did, but still, somewhere in her heart, she really wanted that envelope to hold a yes. She just didn't feel as valid without someone, the world really, validating her. Greedy, she knew it. But that's just the truth of what was in her heart, but at the same time, she wasn't really willing to sell her soul to gain that validation.

#158

The beginning went like this...in the darkest moment of the night, they heard a noise. At first it was quiet. So quiet they almost didn't recognize it as a noise.

But just as the edge of recognition began the sound increased. Soon it was clear. It was song. Playing over and over. It got louder and louder, but then stopped at a volume just below what they could make out clearly. The melody was foggy and the words slightly muffled, but it was playing over and over. It was clear that it was the same song, repeating.

But why?

And how did it get there?

Now both sitting up in bed, they were silent but looking at each other, looking around the room, trying to decide what to do next, but not wanting to speak for fear the spell would be broken. Because that's what it felt like. Like there in their bed, in the dark of night, they had some how mysteriously been placed under a spell.

Just as Alex was getting ready to get out of the bed and see what exactly was going on, it stopped. Almost as if someone could see him about to place a foot on the floor and than in that instant cutting off the music.

By now, the spell had lifted. Claire was looking around, fear teasing the edges of her eyes. Her mouth was beginning to frown and her breathing was quick. She knew something was wrong. Very wrong.

That song. She'd heard it before. But where? She couldn't quite bring it up in her mind, but she knew she knew it.

Alex was tempted to swing his feet back into bed, pull up the covers and roll over, that is, until he saw Claire's face. Then he realized this was one of those moments. A be the man moment. Just like catching a spider he thought.

"Relax Claire, I'm sure it's nothing. I'll go check it out."

With that he grabbed his jeans from the back of the chair and stepped into them. He walked the two steps across the room to the door while zipping up. He reached out, firmly took the door knob in his hand and gave it a turn. The door swung open easily, just like it always had.

He stepped through into the hall way and quickly shut the door behind him. Snapping on the hall light he was thinking, I'll do a little walk around the main floor, grab a glass of water and head right back to bed.

The hall showed no signs of anything other than their normal everyday life. As he drew near the entry to the kitchen, the hairs on his arms began to stand up. His heart began to pound. His mind tried to keep up with what he was seeing.

Lucky #13

She believed in mystery.

Every little while in her life she just expected that something reeking of mystery would happen. About once a months she would begin to search for it in her every day life.

Mystery, after all, kept it from being the dull life that it really was.

After all, there isn't anything interesting about her life at all. She had to create mystery of her own.

Dull is the word of the day when it comes to describing her life. Mom, wife, middle age, middle class, middle America...blah, blah, blah. She may as well be beige like her walls and carpets and cars. She's living in mom jeans and pony tails. Hasn't done her nails in years.

She knows as well as everyone else that there's nothing even interesting about being a wife or being a mom. At least not in her world. There's no one famous or rich. There's no one even noticing if she's coming or going.

Now, she's not a loner or a recluse, but just your typical mom. Going back and forth to the markets to complete the errands. Back and forth to the schools and lessons and practice fields. People notice if she stays away too long or if she somehow calls too much attention to herself, but she's learned her lessons and doesn't play that game anymore.

She's committed to being dull. Playing along and not rocking the boat.

But it gets to her.

The staggering weight of being dull.

So in her mind, when she's traveling down the road, music just a little bit too loud on the car stereo, she's creating a mystery.

Maybe it begins while she's at the gas station buying some cigs, cause you know she doesn't smoke. Good girls don't play like that. Nice girls don't smoke. Especially not her. She would never be "caught" being bad.

But I tell you, there are days she longs for nothing more than to shock the neighbors by standing out on her front porch and lighting up. She wants to take the one long drag and feel it release the stress of the boredom of her days.

She lets her mind wander again. This time someone, a known stranger from her past arrives unexpectedly at her door. She is greeted with a warmth that only exists in her fantasy. No one in real life cherishes her like that.

Again her mind goes off. This time she is free. She doesn't know how it happened, but she is free. She is beautiful. She likes how she looks. She is happy with who she is. The details are fuzzy, but yet the feeling is so very real.

#230

But from the moment he put pen to paper he knew he was changing a life, maybe many lives. He knew telling his story, even bit by bit would save someone. It would help.

Maybe it would simply be helping him. Feeding his need for his story to become truth. It was truth after all, his truth, but something about putting black words down on white paper made it seem more permanent.

He also knew telling his story would not be easy. There were parts of the tale he wrote and crossed out, not yet ready for the whole world to see. He, himself, not yet ready to read those words poured out from his heart, spilled on the page. Some things even he cannot look in the eye yet. The day will come, but today is not now.

There were pages that made him shake, pages that brought smiles. There were pages that brought back all the warmth of a beautiful life moment. There were words that tore and ripped like glass on skin. There were pieces of his story that brought tears. Parts that made his hands sweat and shake.

There were words that drove him from the table, from the task. He would be forced to put his pen down and walk away from it all for a while.

Standing at the kitchen counter, pouring a glass in the fading light of spring evenings, he knows it's time.

Time to tell the tale.

He swallows. Holds the glass close to his chest, stares out the window, seeing the past, a memory.

In his mind she is standing before him. She held the key. Or at least part of the key. She was the beginning of the end and the beginning of the beginning.

He loved her as much as he was ever able to do. But it wasn't enough. For either of them.

He knew it long before she did. If he's truly honest, he knew before it even began with her.

They met through mutual friends. They dated. All the standard dates. Dancing. Dinner. Sweet notes. Walks. Movies. Beautiful conversations.

She had gentle but deep eyes. They were always searching. Trying to pull out a part of his soul. The thing was, he wasn't going to give that to her. It wasn't her fault. Or his. He just wasn't going to be giving it over.

Her heart was young, naive. She was falling in love with him. He could see it. He couldn't stop it. She kept falling deeper and deeper.

There had to be a way out. But so much of them, of the couple that was them, wasn't really love, but a true, deep and pure friendship. She was getting it all confused though.

In spite of the signs he thought he was giving, she was falling.

He desperately wanted her to pull the plug. He wanted her to suddenly realize that it wasn't going to work out between them. But he wanted it to be in a way that wouldn't hurt her.

Although he wasn't in love with her, he loved her. She was special in his life, close to him, even though he would not share everything with her. Even though she would wonder what he was holding back.

Between them it came to be too close to truth.

Perhaps he would burn the pages and never tell this tale after all.

#249

Anyway, you're a hero with a tragic story.

Or at least that's what we're all supposed to believe.

You.

You're the hero.

It's all about you and you are the one who makes it all happen.

Never mind that there are all those "little people" all around you making the magic on your behalf. Never mind that we're all around you fluffing it all up so you look so much better than you really are.

Oh. Wait. Tragic story.

Here's where it begins.

A man, simple, somewhat pure in sensibility, slightly dull, exactly ordinary becomes a hero.

But only because of the tragic.

Without the back story, the flash back, he would seem to be nothing. Just like the rest of us.

But.

He was not. Not exactly like us. When the tragic thing came to pass in his life he rose to meet it in a way that birthed a hero like no other known in our modern day.

His life was utterly demolished by a twisted vicious woman.

She seemingly came out of no where, but that wasn't the case at all. There was a history there.

Decades ago they were friends.

#299

He swallows with some difficulty. As if his drink were not the smoothest scotch in the bar, but a torrent of poison.

It was the words he was having difficulty swallowing, not the drink. The drinks would go down with more and more ease and speed as the night wore into morning. As the words began digesting in the bile he felt rising in his throat.

They would breed a bitterness in his soul that would alter the very course of his life for years to come. Sunlight would cease to shine in his world.

It seared into his mind, never to be erased, only endured as days turned into weeks turned into years.

"I love you, but..."

It's classic. The end always begins that way. And this wasn't new to him. He'd been broken up with before, but this time, this one...he had been so sure of it that he'd given himself away to his lover. Given away his very core. Everything that he had within himself, he'd given. For the first time in his life, he had not held back any part of himself and now, this.

It was done.

He heard the words. He was there at the table, drink in hand, looking at the face and hearing the words, but it wasn't real. It couldn't be.

And then the face was gone.

Simply gone.

No farewell touch. No kiss. No embrace. No note. No photos.

Just gone.

A key left on the table by his hand.

Over.

He kept trying to choke it down, but it wouldn't go.

At last call the lights came up and he had to leave, not because of the closing, but because of the light. Light would make it more real. He had to run, run far into the darkness. Escaping down the street, walking through darkness to his condo, entering but never, never turning on the lights.

Another drink to find more darkness, then motionless, lying in his bed only to get up and move to the sofa. The bed would never be his again. It would have to go. It was full. There was no room for him there now. The memories filled it up and left him no room to stretch out and find the sleep he was longing for.

But sleep was only an illusion. There was no relief there, only dreams. Dreams that woke him bathed in bitterness.

He would shower, but not shave. He would work, but not succeed. He would feed himself, but barely stay alive.

Shame is suffocating. Shame that he gave it all and was left. Shame that he really must be his worst fears of himself. Shame that would bring him to the very brink of his life. Knowing that some day a powerful anger would come. A hate that would drive him in a new destructive direction.

A sick bitter realization that one instant of reaching for a life long love would bring him a decade of trying to become a human again.

#1

What happens happens in silence. In the darkness of the night tears fell. His tears.

A strong, solid man weeping. Alone. In a chair in the dark.

Exhausted.

So tired of trying to hold it all together all the time. At the office, with his family, in his circles. Some days are too hard.

From every direction people are critical. Even when they don't mean to be. It's the unspoken judgements. The tiny slights.

The weight on his heart from another failed love.

He can't quite figure out why all these relationships crumble out from under him.

For years now he's been okay with himself. The trials of life have served him well and made him who he is. He's learned to look in the mirror and like the man who looks back at him.

Except for these rare moments he even enjoys his times alone. It almost never comes to this, but maybe it's the season. Maybe it's just been too long. Maybe it's the silence.

He leans his head back and rests it against the back of the chair. His eyes close and he lets himself go. In this dark room he sits, eyes closed, tears running down his cheeks until there are no more.

A deep sigh fills the room.

He lifts his drink and swallows the cool relief in his glass. It's shallow and lasts just moments before his head is back and his eyes are closed again.

Alone in his mind with his loneliness.

A fantasy begins.

Tears are still escaping his eyes and rolling down his face as he dreams.

The door opens, his secret love walks in, comes across the room, kneels near the chair and takes his hand.

When the Past Comes Knocking

From inside the washer I heard the doorbell. I had been deep in my own thoughts and bent half inside the washer trying to get the last wet socks from the bottom when it rang. In a moment it registered, oh, doorbell.

Up the stairs I went wondering what it would be. UPS, neighbors, some door to door peddler wanting to sell me weak cleaning supplies or magazines that never arrive. I never imagined it would be my past standing there looking in the window.

I opened the door and he automatically began his pitch, trying to sell my something I didn't want. I simply stood there staring at him. Shocked and yet amused.

I had changed.

Over the years I had made a break from it all. Rather dramatically, I'd walked away from my life, just left, went to a new place and began again.

The pattern of my life repeated. It seems I had forever been leaving a place and leaving my identity with it. Moving in and starting over.

The difference was this time, I really thought I had changed. Changed for real. Become someone I wouldn't abandon with another move.

When time and life conspired to bring me back to one of those towns I'd left a life in before, I took the challenge and moved. The difference was this time, I packed up who I was, who I had become and took her with me.

When I got to the new place and unpacked, I unpacked her too. I put her on like a familiar sweat shirt and took my place in this new beginning.

Years went by and I always knew it was possible. After all, the cliche's in life ring true, it's a small world and I was bound to bump into someone from before at some point.

I just never imagined my past would literally come knocking at my door.

But there he stood.

Talking and rambling and selling, shifting foot to foot, smiling and charming, just like days gone by and for a moment, my heart leaped. I won't lie and say it didn't. It did. A little hop for old time sake. Standing there in the sun he cut a fine line and the sale as smooth as any I'd ever heard roll out his mouth.

But just as a summer cloud washes over the sun for a breath, my mind blinked and I became myself again, my new self and I spoke.

"Scotty?"

"Is that really you?"

"Um, yeah, my name is Scott. How did you know?"

"Are you still working at the Dragon Lair?"

"Uh, no...I haven't been there in years. Do I know you?"

"I worked with you there, Scotty, for years. You don't recognize me?"

"No. Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah. I'm sure. I was there when Frank was manager, then Jimmy and Chris and Adrienne and, you really don't know me do you?"

"Sorry, just not really familiar. So do you want to buy this or what?"

"No, no, sorry. It's my policy not to buy door to door."

Closing the door and walking away, I was stunned. Had the years been that hard? Was I that fat and gray that I was unrecognizable?

It dealt a tiny blow to my ego, realizing that all those years of nights in the bars with this group of people I claimed as my friends were really nothing. If I couldn't be recognized a mere 3 or 4 years after the days ended, I could not have really meant anything then.

Reality is like sunlight on the water. It glimmers and sparkles but it gets sucked under into the blackness of the deep and it's gone.

All those drinks. All those dollars. All those parties and hours and laughs and tears. Nothing.

Nothing memorable to anyone but me.

Broken Relationships

The singer croons..."I wanna leave a legacy, how will they remember me...".

A legacy.

As I near 40, realizing perhaps the first half of my life is almost at it's end, I wonder, how do they remember me, am I leaving a legacy?

I think the first half of my life is marred with failure and I doubt the second half will be better.

I look back and see all the broken relationships, I see my faults, my failings, disasters.

But there were two of us. Always. We were both broken by it. But we were both built by it too.

Those shattered pieces fell into place over the years making a mosaic that is simply who each one of us is.

In the dark of winter there is no mercy for the heart, blistered and drained.

I wonder if in the next 40 years I'll see those relationships wind their way back through. I wonder if repairs will be made or if simply a clean slate is there, washed by the sea of our lives gone by. I wonder if we'll again become fast friends. I wonder if we'll look into each others eyes and see sacred souls again.

I wonder if that is a thing born only of youth and new relationships.

Like puppy love.

Will I see through the cynic, the sarcasm, the pessimist and see tenderness, hope and fear?

Annoyed

So today I wrote you 20 mintues, yes a bonus, of brilliance and in a single key stroke it's gone.

And the words were so very hard to come by today.

It's why it's a challenge.

Set the clock. Begin again.

Something new this time.

******************************

One day it will happen, or so I imagine. We'll spend the day together. We'll reminisce. We'll reconnect. We'll remember why we were close years and years ago. We'll share laughs and warm sun, perhaps the ocean. Water always makes life better. Sand and a beach, barefoot and sunburnt. The food will have been wonderful. Filling and tasty and light all at once. Fresh.

Everything about the day, warm and smiling.

By evening, we'll share another meal. A dinner. More serious. Darker, simply because darkness is falling upon us. It will still be warm. There will be rich wine. A fire. Our conversations will wind around back on us.

We will be both young again and old all at once. Our lives stretching into each others. Trying to connect where the gaps tore it open. We each have questions only the other can answer.

They will be honest and tender because we were then.

Not because we are now.

Our lives now are pieces dealt out all around us. We try hard to play them in a winning hand. Sometimes we do. Often it is all a bluff. No chips on the table.

But only in this moment does it seem this way. When the lights snap on and we say our good byes, when we walk back into our lives, we know we are holding winning hands. We know our lives turned out exactly the way they were meant to be. We know we are living the lives we were called to live.

For a moment though, before the quiet flame of the fire, we are kids again, chasing the fantasy of what life could be, of what life will be.

We are gentle with the truth, sensing how it made us who we are. We are gentle with today's truth, the reasons we're still seeking to have each other play a part in the today, and yet with answers now spoken, we know it's over. The long conversation ended.

A dream half dreamt that won't come true for that very reason. If the conversation is had, the questions spoken aloud, answers given in hushed voices, then there is no reason to continue on. And there is a part of us that enjoys those relationship mysteries. Shared history without all the pieces. A little fuzziness on both sides leaves everyone with warmth and the power to over look and slights of decades past.

What was lost was better. A shame it always goes that way.

Total silence and brilliant sun wraps around this room.

Exquisite.

So what does she do, but closes her eyes, because the story lies on the other side.

All through the night the tale told itself and made her toss and turn. Over and over around and around, single scenes disjointed from each other walking before her eyes.

Snipits of conversations, glimpses of people...

"Hey, how are you?"

"Wonderful. I'm great. We're excellent." She says, smiling, knowing the truth is betrayed in her eyes, completely counting on the fact that S. never looks her in the eyes. Their conversations are ones that consist completely of small talk. Over a year's worth of small talk.

Nothing real. Just chat.

And exactly as always, S. turns repeats a similiar set of chats with another 20 people in the next 20 minutes.

Wasted words.

Finally, there is a moment. The chaos is subsiding for a while, the sounds are still blasting away at my brain, but all my responsibilities are spoken for. I have a tiny amount of time all to myself as long as I don't leave the area.

I sit. And wait. Wait for my shoulders to let go. Wait to realize I haven't taken a deep breath all day. Wait to just be.

I grab my book out of my bag and open it up. I read a few words and look around. My back begins to release and I'm starting to breath. I hold up the book again and let the words swim.

I'd love to be in a place where I could simply shut my eyes and day dream.

Then I see S. out of the corner of my eye. She's looking through the observation window. She sees me. Eye contact. I smile, nod. She smiles back.

There is a hesitation, a flicker, so brief I doubt it was there. I believe it's my mind playing tricks on me again.

Back to my book, my peace. It could be days again before I have another moment like this. Alone and yet surrounded.

The chaos returns like a wave crashing over me and leaving me gasping for air. The routine is unbroken. The groups swapped out, one chaos for another. I see a glimmer of my moment ahead.

Longing to get back to my book and chair, knowing I'll read nothing and I'll just sit.

I'm just getting ready to go in, back to my place when it's S.

We never have this much contact in a day. She is walking by me, but not in the normal way. Her head is down, eyes not looking, she walks right into my arm.

The startle for her, assulting. She jumps out of her skin, hardly looks at me, half shouts an appology.

In a total reaction, without thought, I take her arm and walk with her, into the small private office.

Suddenly, I'm the adult where she has always been. This is her domain and she commands it, yet I am now briefly in charge.

I close the door gently behind us. For a moment I stand there. Just leaning against the door. Wondering. Thinking.

She is at her desk. Sitting but defeated or crushed or somehow broken. Not like anything I've ever seen before. It's as startling as if I were seeing her in a fast food uniform this woman of command and power.

Strangly unsettling.

The Story Begins

So he said to her, all high and mighty, smug in his never ending success, "Just get over yourself already. I mean, come on, you're way past the age of success and you haven't even gotten started. Get on it. Just start. Try working at it just 15 minutes a day. But real work."

And so it began.

She spun on her heart and went back to her regular life. All the mundane that there is to live, she's living it. But at the back of her mind, there was the whisper.

The nag.

Did I miss it? Am I past the only jump at success I'll ever have?

Shouldn't I be able to stand here knee deep in a middle-American life and still have my chance even though I'm 20 years past the date? Couldn't I be late to my own party?

At 20 something I held only the loosest ideas of what or who I wanted to be and as the years have gone by and people have come and gone in my life, I'm seeing both more clearly and less clearly, exactly who or what I should have been or am capable of becoming. There is no place that holds more promise than the very moment you live in.

And why on earth put it all out here in the world, for all to see, don't know. Just going to work it that way.

I'm going to keep wasting words until I hit it. But my success will be mine, not determined by the outside. It won't come as a glimmer of fame or a mountain of titles, it won't be on a best seller list or on a most read list. Nope. Somehow, when the thing is finally written, I'll know that was the success. I'll know it just because.

Much like I've known love in my life. I know it the moment I meet it. No explanations will fit. No logic can define it or category hold it. There are simply people of all ages and sexes and races that walk into my life and I love them instantly. There are others I grow to love and plenty to be friends with, but those that bring love into my life.

So the woman, weary with her life, but wrapped up in joy at the very same time, sat her big butt down in front of the machine and began.

She began what would soon become the all encompassing next stretch of her journey in this life. And so it should be.

There are people around me in my life right now, realizing that the important things are sliding right on bye and they are being entirely sensible by being selfish. They are wisely stepping back from the things that are fun and wonderful and connecting and retreating to save those things that are in reality critical to them.

It is a wild and wondrous thing that she can type while looking out the window.

A strange gift and yet sometimes a curse.

Then the mind wanders faster than the words will hit paper.

Read me she screams and yet, let me never be seen. Comment and tell me what I want to hear, but more than that, tell me the truth. I can take it at this late age in my race. I can. That would be a good thing in this life, for if I'm on a wasted track, running a race I should never have put my shoes on for, then for all that is good in this world would someone please tell me, and I'll get out of the way on this track and let those who are fast and sleek run the race.

I'll go back to the sidelines and wander around some more. I'll dream and wonder, what am I really?

She wishes there had been an instruction book left in her life somewhere along the line. One that would have said at this time, turn left here, put on this career, this goal, this personality and go forth. For this will be the time of your success.

But no. It was not like that at all.

No. Instead it came down to this. A challenge.

Put your pen where your waste of time wondering lies and see what comes out.