The Nod

Years ago, after Sand died, when the night sky was clear I'd make a point of taking a moment to talk to him. Just an occasional brief snippet as I'd walk to my car- maybe something a a bit longer on the rare nights I would go camping. When Sims passed a few years later I added him to the ongoing conversation.

Usually these short dialogues would just be me hurtling the agony I felt at their loss towards the sky, struggling to force some kind of connection from across that starlit ether. After a while the frequency of these talks grew more sporadic- sometimes it'd just be couple of times a month, then other weeks it'd happen every other day- but they've never stopped. Honestly, I hope they never do.

 Over the last few weeks though, I've noticed that the tenor of these little exchanges had subtly begun to change- instead of a wistful sadness, I'd just throw Sims "the nod" (he'd know what I mean), or a bright star would catch my eye and I'd find myself smiling and telling Sand to stay frosty. After a particularly rough day, I trudged towards my door and started grumbling that they had better be playing a damn good game of D&D right now, and just the thought of that made me feel happier. It's taken a long time, but I've finally found myself being drawn towards my love of them rather than just wallowing in the loss.

I miss them.
I love them.
I really wish I could talk to them.

 But, by god, they had better be playing a damn good game of D&D right now.

Today's Tombstone

To The Shock Of No One

Erasure poetry ended up being much more difficult that I thought it would be. I added a pretty wretched one to the Jar, but I'll keep trying to improve.

Erase

I've just discovered erasure poetry.


I may have to rethink some things.....

Golden Ratio

Is there communication ratio for friendship? Is one conversation enough? Two? 30? When does that tipping point get reached?

How about texting? If you reach out to someone nearly once a week for a year, but they only reach out to you 20 times, what is that? Are you both friends? Are you their friend, but are they you're acquaintance? Is friendship in that case just a willowy illusion where one person sees something different than the other?

Of course context matters. If that single conversation is deep and meaningful- if it touches both people immensely, wouldn't that be worth decades of perfunctory conversations?  If one person puts more effort into the relationship than the other- what is it that they have exactly? Not friendship, certainly.

Maybe?

I don't know.

I just know that I've met people in my life for the briefest of moments and I've walked way from them feeling more familiarity with them than with people that I've known for years.

I also know that I should have been to bed an hour ago and my brain is struggling to make sense of simple language let alone the complex and often contradictory emotions comprising the Gordian Knot that is interpersonal connections.

2020

This is a (hopefully) rare cross-post from Facebook. It probably should have gone here instead anyway.

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In general, I'm not one for New Year's Resolutions, but with start of a new decade I figured it was a good time to do a bit of self-reflection and start to recover from the emotional shit-show the Tens were for me.

While I haven't set any specific goals (yet), I'm back at the gym again and I spent a good chunk of time on my last day of vacation yesterday setting up a calendar to set aside some time to learn Python or to write- something to prevent me from just sitting around playing video games all evening long.

Well, today was the first day of the of my new itinerary and unexpected circumstances prevented me from doing a single thing on it.

And yet, it ended up being surprisingly productive on the emotional health front so I suppose it really wasn't such a bad way to start off the decade.
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