Sunday Evening

Sundays always bother me. I want to sit outside, while the day away, watch the fading sun light the sky with that burnt orange that lingers for a while, reminding me of orange sorbet. But I live in Chicago, there is no lingering outdoors after Labor Day. It's madness, the chill bites and your ears remember permafrost.

Actually there were days this past "summer" that were very similar to fall, adding the to dissolution of our morale and propagating depression. It was very chilly, it was the year without summer.

Yet for me it will be remembered as the year, after I had thought to put away all past childish behaviors, be a grown up, start saving money for my retirement (!), that I did something I haven't done since I was a stripling, struggling to find my way in the world. It's something everyone goes through, it is a childish affect.

"I can't believe it, I ain't had a crush in years." - LLCoolJ

For me, it has helped me through this non-summer year, when summer is important for my well-being. I need the heat of the sun, I needed it's warm embrace to last me through the cold, grey days of winter in Chicago. What will get me through this winter? This fall?

I"ll keep warm with thoughts of my distant crush. It's a perfect crush, unattainable, unreachable, perfectly balanced on a pedestal.

She is my muse as I've found my voice on this blog, baring my soul, my thoughts finding the words, my heart finding a song. It's a sad song, full of longing, searching and hoping. Sure, I'd give my left ventricle to be with her, but I know it isn't possible, as possible as I could live without a left ventricle. But she is the personification of what could be. What might be. What should be.

And I find myself on this Sunday evening, as the headache that usually presages my return to work on Monday morning pounds away at my concentration, a poet.

Distant star is who you are, a singular thought of beauty.

I’d gather your hair like water, pour it over me and gladly drown.

I’d await your crowded eyes and wrap the world around me.

I’d watch the sunrise of your spreading smile and feel no fear of darkness.

I’d be hypnotized by your dancing hands like a flight of sparrows telling stories.

It isn't finished, I can feel it isn't, it isn't even fully coherent, but then when is love ever sensible? I use the word love because it isn't something we should run from. Why can't I love someone I've never met? We've had our internet conversation, exchange of words, I read her blog and from that glean her personality. Isn't that what our lives are all about anyways? A chance to simply make a connection? Friends, after all come in all different shapes and sizes and can come from all over the world. We open our hearts and bear the risk of ridicule, while we hide behind our firewalls, avatars and monikers.

And sometimes, just sometimes, we show each other how to stop fearing and start loving, even if it's finally learning to love ourselves.

Maybe one day I'll finish the poem, because the love that I've been looking for will have arrived and I can close the chapter on my crush, because she has finished her role.

Self-Humiliation

Sometimes we do things to ourselves that is similar to putting a metaphorical gun to our figurative head. Or we find ourselves with a blood red face to a situation we created.

I’m rather random with what comes out of my mouth some days. I think that as we get older, the filters our parents have put on our mouths slowly start to dissolve until we are geriatric and grumpy. I say if you live to a ripe old age with your mind intact and your faculties functioning, you are allowed to speak your mind and disregard the consequences.

I get carried away with enthusiasm, whether it is for a song, a movie, a game, a person. Why shouldn’t we be passionate? Why shouldn’t we show we care? Why shouldn’t we regard someone we have never met with affection and yes, I daresay, adoration?

I am a fan of writers, both songs and books, why shouldn’t I be interested in what they have to say? How they process their creativity, how they nurture their art? Yet I know someone who consistently calls me a ‘stalker’ because I follow a writer through his processes; who tells us where he is on any given day or his thoughts on any given topic.

Today I blurted out how I have a terrible crush on a celebrity and immediately felt regret. Because I felt that what I said could be so easily misconstrued. In this day and age of instant messages and social networking, we sometimes feel such an instantaneous connection that such full disclosure borders on invasion of privacy, namely, mine. I’ve divulged my deep dark secret. I’ve opened myself up to pity, scorn, ridicule.

But then I thought about it, after a few hours of introspection who cares?

Why should I care about what someone else thinks of me? They don’t walk in my shoes, they don’t live my life, they don’t feel what I feel and they don’t matter unless I let them matter.

I have a crush on a beautiful, articulate, smart, witty actress. Like I’m the only one?