standing still

I decided last night that 23 isn't my favorite number anymore.

I spent much of yesterday and today pensive and pondering. I wish someone had a round trip ticket to certain destinations inside my head. To reveries and reflections. And, the great big Land of Wonder. Some seasoned tourist could land, ready to site-see and give their best interpretation on the origin and history of my latest thoughts. There are people who occupy my mind at times, so to speak, whether they want a free trip or not. There just there, lingering, with no anticipated time of departure.

The YTS has been powwowing-it in the name of Love as of late. We've spent hours, each adding our two cents to the discourse. We've sat fireside, chair-side, bedside and car ride, reading great lines from novels, past journal entries and emails, compiling our own Book of Love, stemming from our own experiences.

What are we to do with those to whom we've given fragments of ourselves? Our very soul? People who've made off with bits and pieces of us and left with us odds and ends of themselves? These people who are so much more than the word "memory?" They linger inside us; some sort of beautiful mess. Songs we'll forever know. Lyrics that won't leave our head. So we beat on, telling ourselves not to think about them, when all that really does is make it worse. With every turn, a memory, and with those memories, your heart begins to sting. Heartache. Actual heart ache. And, just when the stinging dies down, something surfaces - a line in a movie or a book, the same tattered baseball cap covering a head in a sea of people, or a tucked-away a post-it, with that signature scribbly-scrawl, becomes un-tucked, leaving you undone. You're caught living a life you can't leave behind.

There comes a time to empty the box of reveries and let the pictures fade. To delete the play lists. To cancel all flights and itineraries. And to finally stop living out of the suitcases of recollections. What you can't keep is a hard thing to lose.

Time has told me
You're a rare rare find
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind.

And time has told me
Not to ask for more
Someday (my) ocean
Will find its shore.

{Nick Drake}