Saturday

I'm sitting again in my room, watching the snow continue to pile up over my windows. I'm not writing to anyone, so the thoughts in my head are nimble and hard to catch. Part of me wants to aim this at someone, part of me wants to just let it all go and let it all be.

I wrote a long letter to my ex-wife last night. I was pretty honest and pretty open. I haven't deleted it yet, but I haven't sent it either. Some part in the back of my head wants to warn me that honesty and openness, while the ultimate goal, may not be what I need to send her. It's hard wanting to make things between us more solid so that we can reunite the family and raise our children together while knowing that she is in direct contradiction to what I want in my life right now. Raising kids is a noble goal; continuing to be with someone who cannot feed my soul is not. As much as I love her, I need to be with people who have a broader view.

I sent a letter to my last girlfriend this week as well. More of a 'hi' letter, I felt a sudden and urgent need to send something out to her. Strange how delicate every word felt. How measured and deliberate. I wanted her to know that she is still with me without conveying anything unnecessary. No expectations, no grief. How happy I was when she wrote back!

As I sit, I wonder at how a period of time gets borders and seals off and then fades back into time. My childhood memories are still photos, the same as the months I spent with Kelly. The same as last weekend in Cape Cod. They happen and then are gone and it's the residue and how I feel about them that stay in the same time with me. And no matter if these memories are delightful or scary or full of regret, they cannot be altered. I can think about them from different angles and reinterpret what I think they mean, but they are unable to manifest themselves as now reality.

This makes it difficult for me to consider the future with any authority. There are things I could do, places I could go, levels of happiness I could achieve, depths of despair I could plumb, exotic locales, beautiful people. I could start a business, drop out completely again into the deep woods, walk across America and beyond. I could build a spaceship, a submarine, a kit car or a fortune. Some of these I expect I will do, and yet, knowing that everything has a beginning, middle and end, I can also see that everything that I will do will also appear in my rear view window as a memory that has no real bearing on anything I would know currently. What I look forward to I will also remember. This is the wonder of contemplating a creature in amber.

Here is where there is room for all the thoughts of suicide and despair. And yet here is also where there is a great deal of laughter and freedom. I think the point is that all of it is impermanent. This makes it more about living as close to the bone as possible. There are deep regrets that have pestered me. There is great love that flows through me. We are part of a stream that is made up of the same kinds of things but always in different combinations. The water passing by is not the same water though it is all water. Each drop is unique and endlessly combining with other unique drops. Same same always, and yet never the same.

This is me as well. I may look the same, and my interactions with my life make patterns that seem to define me, but I am made up of endlessly changing combinations of events and feelings and relationships and environments. I am never the same, though I think of myself as unchanging, though others see me the same year after year.