The Thin Line

I wondered if February would be as kind as January.

Well it wasn't.

Or maybe I wasn't kind. To me. Maybe I took some cues from some other people. Let them get in through those cracks of persistence. Persisting the bad and resisting the good.

It's my doing.

All was not lost. Some was really good.

I think I should be lucky to die and utter such words:

Life. Mostly beautiful and sometimes really painful but mostly beautiful and sometimes so painful that it became beauty in and of itself, you know in the right light with the right words and just the right amount of resolve.

It seems in February a transition occurred.

My words and my writing are so much more real. And so much more protected.

Can I keep up the facade, and should I call it a facade? This appreciating the moments business? Is this fake?

I know I was trying to achieve an effect, and maybe in a year's time, I'll look back at it, and not choke on the sentiment and not spew it out like sour milk. 

Maybe it's the mothers milk to still believe like that, to get through these infantile times, to grow up big and strong on big beliefs.

I've been working on some songs and poems, and now my writing is coming out in verses and phrases, and because this is part of my now, it will become part of my history, and part of my thread, and one frame of the tapestry.

February was painful, and it was beautiful, but in hindsight it was mostly beautiful because it took me to a new vista. Or am I revisting this vista I abandoned so long ago...or did I just drift away, and lose sight of it while paddling to that elusive horizon, that piece of sun I'll never touch.

I had to get back here. This was Atlantis.

I swam away frightened by the waves of my beautiful invention.

Only I can live here.




I set a goal for this month. I set the date, Feb 28th, a Thursday. And that's today.

I have my five chords, but I don't play them in rapid fire succession the way I had planned. 

I didn't practice enough.

But I started this new song called "Abandon Me."

It's a plea.

It's her salvation, to be abandoned.

It's mercy.

But it's never tendered.

Sometimes you just have to grant yourself that passage, that forgiveness.

You can't rely on others.

Especially those who loved you.



So here I am wondering about something. 

Anonymity.

Is power or is it coward? 

About writing and revelations and vulnerability.

Behind this veil.

And knowing hardly anyone reads anyway.

And still this protection. This riddle.

Am I kidding myself?

No. I'm not a joke.

I'm dead.

Serious.

This is the time to die, slowly, letting go of each detail in circumstance and pomp and grief.

It makes the being reborn all the sweeter. That first yellow daffodil. So delicate and yet facing the most bitter weather of all: that is unpredictability. Frost and sunshine and one last snow. But she comes out anyway. Is she stupid or is she strong or can she simply not help it? 

Her time has come.

I have to be here.

I have to inhale the ashes.

That's my skin.

And if it's not thin

Then it's tough.

And that's when I lose myself.

The good part.

Right now. I burned the bad. The thick. The callous. The canker. The fear.

Next time, I'll tell you how I did that.

With shiny new skin that's never been burned.

But knows it will soon enough.