friday 07.07

I write not knowing exactly what to write. I was listening to music and kept skipping from various artist to various artist and sometimes back again and no music was moving me so I shut it off. I opened up a book and began reading where I had left a mark, not remembering having read it before so I backed up a page and started from there and then realized I stopped reading for a reason. I did not like the book. My mind is full of clutter.

Two nights out in Dallas in a row and tonight I am home again and feel like a caged bird who has had its wings clipped. My surroundings are too comfortable for my own liking and I yearn for excitement and the unknown. Similar to what I had Wednesday and Thursday night and although each situation was different, polar opposites, I enjoyed myself and more importantly enjoyed the companionship of other people and although I have learned that I am my best friend and I treat myself with dignity, I desire to share it again much sooner than later and this causes me to want more and need more at a time when I know rest is important.

I watch the lights flicker and the motion makes me want to move. The cars that drive by from a distance make me want to leave on a road to nowhere, leading to somewhere after a time and this idea puts a smile on my face if only for a moment or more, it still is a smile. A bold smile, the kind that makes your jaw bones ache with unknown happiness, deliberate and soothing, but still aching because I know even when the phone rings, tonight I will remain housebound and this, especially tonight, I dread for no reason than the fact than I can and I do.

I reflect on the day and the kaleidoscope of thoughts and altered images that left me with a stomach ache and I want my wings to soar on a long flight, to nowhere like the cars and then someday, but not today, back again. Instead I remain still, out of focus for longer than an hour now with no resolution in sight. Boredom sets in before ten.

new beginnings

I was given a new hospice nurse today. His name is Mike and he has a British accent mixed with a thick dialect from Nigeria. No reason was given as to why Eve no longer will be coming by, only code which I did not understand as truth. I sat with Mike and listened and he listened as a new relationship began, all while I wondered what had happened to my team, developed and nurtured for five months prior to today, a trusted group that now becomes a memory for me to write about and ponder.

mrs loveland

Last night was a gathering my family was invited too, I attended and met a woman, old in soul and years, by my standards, youthful in spirit and wise, very wise. I saw her at a short distance and while I glanced, she glanced and invited 'this character to tell her my interesting story'.

We spoke of my youth, her grape ice cream, her eighty-seven years of living and her secret to longevity, laughter and humor, 'oh and don't forget to move honey, always moving'. We spoke of her tenure at Baylor, seventy years ago this fall and her studies and degree in English Literature. We spoke of Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner, her days as a child in Rockwall, her daily trips to yoga, her fascination with the verbal word and her donations, countless hours of money and time to libraries, how she loves libraries.

Her eyes have weakened slight and thus she only reads thirty minutes a day, no glasses or contacts, no cain or limp to visual. She was proper and she was Southern and she was a Texan, born and raised in Rockwall County, the daughter of one father and one mother who both lived into their nineties, the sister of two brothers, the husband to one deceased seven years ago and the mother to two boys.

She is a church going woman, Baptist and she is learned. What she knows, she knows and is willing to share with a character like me as she sips the glass of sangria I got her, her first glass in a lifetime, as she told the tale of her fantasy of sipping sangria on a hammock one day, not this day, but a day she had seen in her mind and we laughed as did others who congregated around us and wondered how we had met and conversed so flawlessly.

An inference was made after we said our initial goodbyes, by another attendee, of her family stature in the community and the wealth, sick with old Texas money, oodles of money and she sat at a distance, watching others, remaining alone, until my next approach, me promising to visit her at her home, maybe even take a ride with her around town and possibly, if she would like, read her favorite book for us both to enjoy.

She saw me a character, I told her I was Eric and her soul spoke and my soul spoke and we conversed without barriers about world traveler and destinations none to foreign, disease and cultural events from Helen Hayes, to city elections, to the price of an electric ice cream maker, to last years party ,to a time when she too was an athletic fanatic and we laughed, real laughter and spoke real words from the heart and from the soul. None to challenging and none to obscure as we simply connected for many minutes and made the gathering more enjoyable for the both of us and possibly those around us.

wednesday 05.07

We are spiritual beings having a human experience and not human beings having a spiritual experience...
give rise to the slave drum, (srainey)
dust off your wooden shoes and
dance to the rhythm in a symphonic harmony of low tones and copper tones, kettle, rawhide or bamboo and
play vanity for what you know, your today's mantra and the experience brought forth with a good old fashion floor dusting, the kind where the pennies are not swept under the rug, but collected in a bureau jar that clangs of good wishes and present fortunes...

arrival of the young doves

thoughts behind the rainbow

monday 03.07

I started the day with panic, sheer panic and the pain and the tingle ran from the blood of my fingernails on the right to the callus of my left toe. My head pounded, my mind frayed, my thoughts jumbled, my heart thumping faster than that of a rabbit in heat No explanation and no deductive reasoning could explain the phenomenon that internally transpired.

Now having rested and still appearing anxious, I am able to write short thoughts about the terror possibly self inflicted from sleep deprivation or sun stroke.

Endorphins flew and I could not catch them in motion but I felt their presence and do not welcome their visit any time later than now. My breath stopped for a moment and I fell hard on a bruised ego and a leg. The rush was real, unexpected and unwelcomed and embraced as my own as I try to prevent another start day the same tomorrow and there after.