11/10/10 Contrasts

I sit on the mat in the half-light before the sun comes up, and breathe deeply. My mat faces roughly east, as it has in almost every apartment I've ever lived that suited me at all, and I can see out the windows on the front of our building clouds lit from below by the rising sun shading from a vivid pink to a brilliant gold against a gray sky.

My wedding ring clicks on the wood floor as I shift to a new position in my routine. I never take it off.

10-27-10 let's pretend

Last night, my good friend JT reminded me how much I enjoy playing "let's pretend" by letting me take part in a reading of his new play. I got to act like a 70 year old abbot of a monastery who tries and convicts one of his charges of (spoiler alert) homosexual conduct with a being who may or may not be some kind of angel.

As JT's words worked through my body, I found my posture hunching, my hands snarling into the arthritic claws characteristic of my grandfather, passions and sorrows that were not mine, but were familiar to me, spilling into the light. An old man lived in my skin for an hour or so, and I walked away feeling... good, like I'd just built a table with my hands, when all I had done was let another part of humanity have a voice for a little while.

10-21-10 The days are long, but the years are short

I wake up from a cold, dark dream of a run down home which bears a striking resemblance to my time in Queens, and I realize that today, despite all the good that has occurred, all the joy I have had in the past few months, that I am still myself.

This has a bad side, and a good side. I am still directionless, wandering my days, wondering how I can possibly achieve anything in this life where I have wasted so much time.

On the good side, I still wake up next to a beautiful woman I adore, who rolls over as I get out of bed in the darkness to begin my morning, and sleepily says, every morning without fail for the last year we've lived together, "I love you."