The Boy Is Back

My family is back after a week away. I shed tears of joy at the train station, seeing my little boy. He smiled and turned away and smiled and reached out. I tell you, my heart is his.
    I am the luckiest guy alive, my lady is a great mom and an awesome person. Together we made a child that smiles hugely.

Reading

Write a word, a phrase. Followed by another and another. I'm not convinced. All I want to do is read. Summer windows wide open, stacks of books beside the couch, in my lap, cool water and fruit in a bowl. Reading theory and history and folklore, science fiction and fact, fantasy and myth, Gorging on it, drowsing as if with too little beer. Luxuriating as if no one will call, for hours, for days.
    Roll me over, call me for supper, pour me a drink again and again, I have notes to take, breaks maybe for coffee and dreamy walks.
    Let the words flow into my sleep, let me start with a nod and try again to polish off the chapter before I lay the text, splayed open, on my chest.
    My yearning pulls me here, to this desire. So simple that if indeed I had days to squander, I'd be a fool and seek diversion elsewhere, forgetting this one true love and seeking distraction in some shiny, moving thing.

Slow Walking Thanks

To walk streets slowly is a gift. Every step intentional, every sidewalk crack another line in a vast sprawling poem that each new walk reveals another stanza of. The houses, the homes, the buildings themselves creak with character. The hockey stick garden posts, the porch furniture sagging, the paint jobs and the rusting banisters, bicycles teamed up like herds, chained to each other. The chalk drawings on walls and in alleys, on sidewalks are all blessings. The children are safe and they can scribble, they can add to and better the ill thought out sprayings of their elders. They can write games, inviting slow walkers to take note, reminding fast walkers to slow down. Where are you rushing off to ? Yoga ? Coffee ? Don't rush to where you can slow down. Slow down all the way there.
    The trees are waking up. The blossoms cascade over lawns. There are book boxes, sharing spaces, places that reaffirm our humanity. There are so many things to give thanks for every step on the long way roundabout  towards home. Gratitude comes with breathe, with slow and careful steps. Thank you.

On Yearning

Some songs make me yearn for something heavy. Nothing in particular, just solid, deep yearning. Some songs just punch you in the heart and open this place where longing and bittersweet pain mingle and confound you.
    Longing is something I've long associated with. I reckoned it as a major force in my life early on. I would yearn and long and weep and swell my heart. I would imagine how incalculably awesome it would be to merge with old mossy walls, to enter the landscape. No, it wasn't imagination. It was imageless. It was pure emotion. My kisses turned to bites. I needed union with X. No matter how far away, I reached out my heart strings, those auric ropes that when severed make you grind your teeth and rend your clothing. I would reach out those tendrils and they would wrap themselves around the object of my longing.
    Often it was a girl, someone who I fixated upon, someone who would complete me. Of course, it's now that I see it was the yearning itself I wanted. I loved the state, so romantic to need something distant, other, removed, transcendent, spectacular. Craving, relishing future morsels, ordering a second burger half way through the first. Not necessarily living in the present, caught somewhere between past and future, skipping over what was directly in front of me. Preferring some moment yet to come, maybe never to come.
    Some songs make every pore in me quiver, gasping for air. Every pore puckering, gulping as much love as they can. Arid stretches where I simply walk weakened with thirst, giddy from hunger, light headed because some something greater than I hovers near but still just slightly out of reach. Curves to dwell on, trees that make you ache, skies pounding out cloud after cloud of intangible handfuls.
    Some songs make me wail, make me mourn, make me shudder sobs, make me cry, simply put, make me cry. Open wounds, cracked scabs oiled over and peeled away, heart, heavy, hope, words like that. Vastness of feeling, reaching, failing, gasping. All that.
    Very few songs do all this. Songs I can't tell you which ones. Songs I don't know right now. Music I can't play, can't understand. Some soul, some blues, some folk, some dirge dragging every widow from grave to grave, baskets of flowers, dumb struck children following closely, staggered greys all around, threat of spring, threat of summer, threat of full life ripening, forever always.