---

All smiles..

---

I had a good time last night.  I was resistant to allowing myself the enjoyments of youth.  I let my mood dictate my course of action as oppose to just letting loose.   Mind you, that I was a stiff, self-consciously & utter-ably out of place, but nevertheless once decidedly wanting to make the best of impressions, I sucked up my pride and self-dignity, what little I had left, and... I just went with it.  

Some words to describe the night: mesmerizing, captivating, and all smiles.

---

Just go with it...

---

So obviously I was out of my element.  I was playing on unfamiliar turf, but step it up to my court, and my arena... maybe the tables should turn a bit.  A bit of a challenge and a request... I dare say it's worth it.

---

---

We held hands...

---

Underneath a table, side by side, my hand found yours.   I played with your fingers and then eased them, yours and mine between each other.  You gripped my hand, and I knew you weren't going to let go.  Not now, not ever.  We we made eye contact what was brief to anyone who noticed, but was an eternity for us.  You slightly smiled and turned your attention towards our friends.  It's been long since I've seen everyone, it's been long since I've seen you... but my feelings remain the same...

This conjured image so warm, based on life, and based in dreams...

I awaken.   A lot can change in ten years.  You might not even recognize me anymore.

---

I've been sick all week.

---

Maybe it's the air quality, though in truth, I was careless Monday.  The extreme temperature between A/C  and non A/C environments couldn't have helped any.  Not drinking enough water doesn't help either.  Drinking hella alcohol doesn't help either... seems like poor choices for a supposedly grown man.  

---

"I may grow old, but I refuse to grow up"

---

So someone once said.  

I still dream.   Somewhere I got the idea that growing up would be like not dreaming anymore.  Like waking up to the cold hard reality of it.  Life just takes hold... and you stop dreaming.  I wasn't far off...  I hadn't dreamt in ages...  I mean really dream.  The longing wishing dreaming if there was an African Goddess in heaven type of dream... shit if this was how life worked out to be...  I'd have you now.  You'd have me..., but then I guess that might be a nightmare huh... depends on perspective.  :/   yeah... changing subjects.

---

I'm going to die.

---

Not in the immediate future if I can hep it.  But in all likelihood, the odds are set against me.  I'm okay with mortality, but you question the necessity of the finite if what we have ahead of us... you know where we go after... if that's infinite, why the finite?  Trial & error, test & judgment.  Hell I'm screwed to begin with if life's one big exam.  I'm a lousy test taker... and than the whole life is one exam after another takes on a whole new scale of meaning.  St. Peter and his keys to the pearly gates, and Cerberus and his three sets of piercing eyes... doomed.  

Then there's the other theory... the life is infinite theory...  that the cycle continues and on and on with no end... your only escape is dying as an innocent a thousand times over.  Which means for the ilk that is my kind, being born a badass wins me a ticket to eternity's-ville.  Sorry, man, you're shit out of luck.  Questionable, many of those close to me would roll their eyes at my claim to the badass category... yeah you're a real badass alright...  but I'm saying... I don't worship evil... there's just this appeal... like a completeness that otherwise defaces our value.  homo superior - that is man, is not without the light and the dark.   Considering our roots... murder, rape and the various incarnations of said sins a thousand times over and you get the picture.  Granted man doesn't go around raping and pillaging villages as much anymore (O_O yeah as much)  and we're all cultured and civilized thank Jeebus... but we do it in otherwise.  We kill each others time, we kill people's dreams, we destroy identities, we steal it, we rape it.  It's far removed from before... but it's still there.  

Consider Man.  Today's man.  He's far removed as well.  No longer is he tied to just finding the means of surviving... hunting and gathering... we have evolved and so has our passions for destruction.  Enlightenment is fooling us into thinking we can hide the shadows at our backs... that there is no heart of darkness... I beg to differ.  Accept it.  There's two sides to the coin.  (P.S. yeah I just saw Dark Night, and yes you should watch it.)  

So there's this side to me that's light and then there's this darkness.  I apart of me dreams of hopeful things,  Another is all fatalistic.  There's this infinite life or death or both and there's an exam.. so listen up.  Enlightenment if a candle that attracts moths which you can kill for fun by plucking their wings and in which case you're going to rot in hell of be reincarnated as a moth who gets killed by having its wings pulled off... and then there's this headache... because I drink too much, all of which will probably if not now sooner, will eventually later kill me.  Thank you and goodnight.  

---

P.S.S: Dare to dream.

---

She taught me what a boredom boner was.  She taught me what it meant to be imprisoned by love.  Love... I loved her before I even knew what it was...  There's love in the Light..., but there's also a darkness about it.  Like our souls, like our hearts... there's no escape.  Save but then in my innocence in which I knew it ass pure and as white as a thousand supernovas collapsing into itself.  And all that energy released and loss and brought back into itself.  Love gives endlessly, and I'm there left never the same again.  Someday I will find you again... I will tell you how you changed my life for the better... that had you not bribed the fake sheriff to put me in fake jail, I'd never have this feeling that was so real.  So I can't die... not yet, not into I see you again.

---

July 4th Weekend

---

9:00 AM.  "You can't be serious."

Reading the caller ID, "Of course, who else would it be."  My most impatient cousin, Stan, who whether by choice or lack of consideration holds the Can't Hardly Wait title.  I had promised to take him & my other  little cousins to the movies for the last several months.  I hadn't delivered on Narnia, but now was a chance at redemption.  This was Mr. Smith's trademark blockbuster weekend, and Hancock was sure to be a worthy contender in the July 4th movies.  Surely it would not be like that Wild Wild West fiasco.  

I spent most the day helping out with chores at home.  That's right, that's how we do it... suffering is key to enlightenment they say... so I bit my lip and turned the cheek.  Surprisingly, it was nice to help out.  It's just the things that were said... ahhrgghh.... "Parents, they just don't understand.  Right r. Smith?"

6:30 PM.  "Are you coming."

"Yeah, I'm a little late.  I have to eat dinner with my ma real quick.  Twenty minutes, Stan."  

7:45 PM. "We just missed it.  Let's catch the 8:15 showing."

10:30ish PM.  "Are you coming to the picnic tomorrow?"  

---

July 5th: The Day after Independence Day

---

It was one of those rare good son day.  They were common, almost taken for granted, when I was younger, but now those good son days are scarce.  Maybe there's too much demand for it... maybe it was a scarce resource and now that it's depleted, supply is very very low.  In any case, I enjoyed it mostly.  It was almost what mother's day should have been like.  Didn't really deliver than, but better late than never.  The rest of the day was spent helping out, save but a brief escape to Barnes & Noble to "study".  That attempt is best described with my lil' Emo cousin Anton's latest favorite catch phrase "Epic fail."  I ended the night with a caffeine high which given one word to describe I'd chose. "Hell Yes!"  Yeah, I know.  :P  

---

July 6th: Sunday Morning

---

I've awaken early as planned, but the household wasn't awake.  I didn't know what stirred me, but I grabbed my Marvel Comic's Essential: Silver Surfer Vol.1

.  As I'm reading, my brother awakens, and in a blur was off to... 'save the world?'... "didn't really catch that bro... what?"... and he's gone.  

12:00 Noonish.  I'm starving and waiting.  The foods in front of me, but I can't eat.  she's not here.  I'm waiting on her again.  

6:30ish PM.  Golfing Range followed by dinner.  Not having to wait with food in front of me, and cool mango ice tea... yummy.  Extra tip:  Learned her name.

9 something PM.  I see my brother again.  Knocked out on his bed.  Hmm... "saving the world must be take a lot out of you"  

Thus is the destiny of the Silver Surfer!

---

It's in the little things you say...

---

They give you away.  Your little thought processes, aren't you clever and sharp as a knife.  How you cut me with you words and slice me with you concern.  I know you care your very special way, so you open your mind, and how now I see so clearly what I mean to you.  And how now how silly do I look to you.  

---

It's those little daggers in your voice...

---

So I'm heartless.  Because I move on and I runaway.  Because I'm naturally the complete opposite of what you are.  You stay and fight the good fight... I run and run... you're back and forth indecisive, and I'm what's done is done.  I'm heartless because friends I got a lot of though, you're so much better than me because... oh wait, time, you wait Cal, you'll see.  As if having one on the side is so much better, as if the second time is so much better... I'm not counting I'm not keeping score... I don't care any much anyway I'm already out the door.  

---

It's how we speak without speaking...

---

Now it's not just you it's me.  I take issue, and you're not letting up, and I'm bout giving up...  there's now real exchange, the dialogue is what it is... cordial formality. I think you're about had enough, and maybe I'm being too tough... because that is what that is... two differing realities.  

---

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder...

I stole this title.

---

It's many things: the distance, the time away, the hours upon hours of reflection.  You replay it like a broken record.  The musical loop that becomes you're background noise where it's pushed to that deep dark corner of your mind.   Just there, the reflection, the play of light and I see into those captivating lenses.  

At first you remove all emotion.  Emotion clouds clarity, clouds cognition, clouds the cerebral.  Then you walk, it doesn't matter which direction, walk... you'll find yourself inevitably heading towards that which is most comfortable and convenient...  you never arrive: keep walking or settle.  

---

What is it that makes you walk?

---

That question beaten and battered, blood soaked and broken bones... slam you face against the pavement, pound your bleeding knuckles at the brick wall, brick break back best, and run - tear your shirt off and run, screaming bloody mary bloody fucking mary to the night sky hoping and wishing the heavens hear your cry.

---

There was that one time I would have gladly died right there.

---

And there you were, and here I was.  What foolishness is this, that we tempt the gods.  Lives, futures, hang in the balance, but those moments.  I'd trade nothing and keep them all to myself.  There we were, and here I am.  Before you I stood, letter in hand... the voice came from the heart and I said, I said here I stand.  I exist not in memory not in life and not in death but in flux.  Change is the only thing that never changes... so change is constant.  CLEER.  Than that was us, there we were, as I stand there we stood.  Our lives ahead of us n that day.  Celebration for accomplishing what was really the big inside joke.  Now our lives ahead and that was a story, now I got a story.  That was high, how we were high.  Hardly awake, barely slept, and there we were by the ocean force wave after wave we fought nature at the top of our lungs we shouted at the top of our lungs.  Is that all you got?  That was then, and this is now, and here we stand.

---

Yeah we're that loud obnoxious party.

---

This is us at a restaurant with normal patrons around.  This is that there moment.  This is Mar's & Og's there moment.  I'm glad I was able to share in that moment with them.  Congrats friends.  

---

You're just annoyed because you're not having as much fun.

---

---

in my dreams...

---

it's a reaccuring dream,
about a girl, she was my world...
however big one's world could be at 13.

we fell in love playing basketball,
we fell in love hanging out after school...
i did anyway.

i loved her before i even knew what love was.
i still do.

i know what you're thinking. it's just a memory, a thought, that i love. ...yeah... but it's more too.

it's not just a static memory, but a living one. i replay it. reaccess. re-evaluate. if ever i feel that way again, i will never let it go... i hope.

---

man= a conundrum, a self aware paradox

---

how can he love so deeply and walk away? did he ever love at all?

was i too young, was i too dumb? do i doubt myself and give in to dispair, or do trust in trust?