Curiouser and Curiouser...Exploring My Inner Wonderland

Having started a confessional blog, quite by accident, leaves me feeling a bit shy. I look at the expanse of blank, white box before me with the insistent little cursor, blink-blink-blink, demanding I open a vein and spill my thoughts out to rush over the page. Today feels more like blood on the ice, a few bright drops, suspended on a moment, before vanishing into the slush leaving barely a tint of where they were.

It has been a day of almost.

Something has been nibbling at the edges of my mind all day and every time I try to focus on it I find that it has flittered away and I am left pondering the emptiness that speaks of a new vacancy as it grows slowly cold.  Almost…

I want to speak of friends, love, family, rain, gaming, the hollow places in me where things echo, how sometimes buying new things is really exciting and how there are days when nothing actually went wrong but still you wonder why you got out of bed at all. I have words and phrases teasing me with their intentions but not a one is spooling out in any behaved manner. Almost…

I haven’t written in such a long time the mechanics seem a bit stiff, some gears are rusty, there is an occasional puff of dust as things get moving again. I think what feels so odd is that I have never really written outward before. My previous blogs have all been me, tracking my internal dialog, keeping a record of where I have been in hopes that one day I could look back at it and say, “Yep… That. Yeah, that right there. See that moment when you bargained away something you needed for something you thought you might want? That is where you screwed up!” Trouble is that I knew that then as well as I could see it now so while I may find a pretty phrase here and there and a handful of poignant moments recorded for posterity there is really nothing for me. There is naught wrong with glancing back now in then, it can reset your perspective and true up the measure of your progress, but I’ve always been told you oughtn’t stare.

Words. We will think about words today.

Words can heal hearts, poison minds, inspire people to great deeds or start wars, and yet we allow anyone to toss them about with reckless abandon. We painstakingly teach them to babies! We have hundreds of languages so we can use new and interesting words that mean almost the same thing with a slight shift in nuance, a je ne sais quoi, if you will. *wink*

There are words I have received that were gilded with love and jeweled with respect that still make my spine straighten and eyes prickled when I replay them, and others, that swing like a razored pendulum over my heart, cutting the thinnest, shallowest line, making sure the wound never heals. I will always believe that we have it all wrong; two of the dirtiest and foulest words you should never utter are “only” and “just”.  Think of any sentence that lifted your heart and insert either of those two words into it to see what I mean. These are the four letter words they warned you about!

Today I feel lonely and melancholy for no external reason. Tears prickle for any and no reason and I have wanted to fold into myself all day. It is not one of my better days but it is far from my worst. My mind keeps wandering and leaving me behind staring blankly in space, detached and still like a passenger on a subway, nonresponsive and almost vacant. I kept catching myself in these moments and wondering what it is that has been washing my day in a yearning.

I want to pull a good feeling around me and snuggle into it like a warm blanket. I want to hear words full of thought and emotion; I want to speak in symbols and pictures and see the air fill with meaningful conversation; I want to feel the warmth of genuine interest and shared knowledge. My cup is empty and I want to fill it. I want to fill it until I can climb into it, sink down and feel connected and alive. I feel full of magpies having only one side of hundreds of conversations until their chatter becomes a gray hum drowning out the color in my life.

I think what I will do is finish this beer, take a nice shower, get some sleep, and start over again tomorrow. The last of my hoarded Leinenkugel’s Berry Weiss is reminding me of friendship, great music, War Pigs and one of the best road trips, ever…