Is a difference that makes no difference really a difference at all?
You know like a parallel universe where one tree on another continent had 36 leaves when ours have 34? When is a difference really a difference? And what if the only difference is the distance between what I see and what you see?
To say that it's only in your mind is a misnomer like jumbo shrimp, honest politician, or government intelligence. Only in your mind, a universe in itself and in so many ways, everything? Only? Really? About the same as the used car salesman saying that useless pile of rust can be yours for only a lot of money. If it's on or in your mind, there is no only about it.
They say that the direst prison is the mind itself. I say what's far worse is that even a free mind can be a prisoner of circumstance. And circumstance is the figurative Alcatraz. Tell me what is worse: A room with no windows or a room with see-through walls? Yet neither have a door. Is ignorance truly bliss? For otherwise does it not hurt when you can know, understand, feel, see... Yet never truly be? To dream of the possible while facing the probable? To see, to almost know, but never quite touch? Like trying to remember a name you swear you never forgot, yet it seems lost in the depths of memory.
And what of dreams? What is it to awaken when you can never truly step out into the sun? A world.. A whole universe appearing to be at arm's length, But so like a mirror. You cannot reach beyond that reflective glass.
Sometimes the end of the money comes well before the end of the month. Sometimes the end of the day comes before the end of things to be done. And I'm sure there will be something I was planning on doing the day after that I'll never be able to do.
There are the beautiful spoken words of love never ending... And it is beautiful.. But it can be painful when there is no end to the love, yet the same cannot be said for the loved. And let me tell you something I have learned all too recently in my life: Love songs get a lot of things wrong, you know. Maybe I'm not a good judge of romance and all that stuff, because such things never worked so well for me... So, Happy couples: Feel free to tell me if I am wrong. But., In my experience, there are many kinds of platonic love that runs just as deeply, just as strongly as any romantic love.. Even more so. And I know this to be true. I thought I learned a new level of emotional pain when my wife left me at the end of 2008.. And yes it did hurt a lot. More than anything that had happened before. But it wasn't until 2022 that I realized what true loss was.. I never knew that grief could be felt physically, as if I had taken gravely ill myself. See, even back in '08 and '09, my family was there. They all were, you know.. My sisters and my parents. Momma, and Marsha. My sisters, both of them were like guardians, and their protectiveness meant so much to my broken heart because it reminded me that somebody still cared about me. I could pick up the phone and call if I needed to talk. What is a catch-22? Not being able to just call Marsha to talk about just how tough it is without her around. Oh I can scroll down my contact list and her name and number is still there.. Mainly because I do not have the heart to delete it. But I cannot press that green button and talk to her... And that's a hell of a thing to live with, my friends. It is a tale of two days that I dread so much. Her Birthday and mine. 8 years, 1 week... Nixon to Reagan. Cronkite to Rather. Quite a few years to be older than someone yet still here. Proof the universe does not run on logic or sense. We choose our wives, husbands, girlfriends, Yadda Yadda Yoda... You choose your friends and not your kin. A brother does not choose who his sisters will be... But If I could have, I would have still picked them. And I think I did really well in the parent lottery, too.
You can find a lot of sad songs about losing a romantic partner.. But the closest I can find to all that I have been going through these long months since January, is Johnny Van Zant's song about his elder brother. "Down Brickyard Road"
I Know I can't bring back yesterday........
There is nothing new to things making no logical sense. Such things have and always will exist in this world. But sometimes they really don't have to make any logical sense. Especially when they make emotional sense. To paraphrase something from Star Trek IV, The logical thing is not always the human thing. It is logical to fit the mold we were cast into, fill the role the world expects us to play. It is certainly the path of least resistance, less conflict (Yet conflict always exists no matter what).. But it is also the path of limitation and the least happiness, to be deprived of even simple recognition. Even if it might at first seem easier to go with the pull of the current, play your role, only to exit stage left sometime in the future. It almost seems that the entire universe is at odds with that inner core that knows, has always known. Everything from the earliest knowledge of existence, of circumstance, of the role. Surely it would be easier to not go against so many things that seems to be at odds with that deeper reality that you know to be true. Yet there are no easy paths at all. I have often thought about a forked path ahead, one to the left and the other to the right. Only one of them leads to anything predictable and it is however many more years of the same. The other path? Happiness? Fulfillment? Chaos? Ruin? I have often wondered. The only certainty is that a lot of things would change. Though for the better or the worse, I could not even guess.. The known? Stagnation, Stalemate, The Status Quo, the same old self imprisonment, of being stifled, wanting to shout but remaining forever silent. More of the same. What worth is an empty life leading to a meaningless death? And who in their right mind would ever want that? Still there is conflict, that endless inner argument where a part of me shouts, nearly screams to flip the damned table over, even if it also turns my world upside down.
When is silence truly golden? When is it simply Iron, The steel that make up the bars? What is it to walk along that edge with the awesome view, so frightening when you look down? What is it to take that one step from which you can never return? What is it like to just stand there for years, frozen with fear? What is it like to be the warden of your own prison? Your captor, your jailer, that face in the mirror that never seems right? Tell me, though I already know. What is it like?
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