what i am in love with ultimately is the change in seasons. as winter hangs on to a losing battle, i can already sense the change: the angle of the sun is different, the air is opening. and with change i am always filled with a new sense of anticipation. spring then summer, then fall. i will be able to walk outside again, with my wife, with my daughter, and now, with my son as well.

everyone to some extent wants a promise to be made and kept for a lifetime from someone they are willing to believe in.

the quality of the sun never lies: it always begins with the sun, a change in the angle, the quality of warmth. the sun is very clear when it will be ready. and as I sit in it as of for the very first time I am moved impossibly to tears. It feels as if i’ve been in the dark and cold for far too long.

you can break a person much more easily than break an addiction. you do not become addicted to people, it is the circumstance, it is the thrill of denial, that you are alright when everything you are doing is wrong. it is not his face. it is not her voice. it is not the feel of warm fingers clasped around your arm. it is none of those things. just as it is not the needle or the spoon or your friend that wiggles the pack before you. it is everything, it is the subversion of everything else. it is the perversion of the person, of the place, of you. it is the wormhole where you never arrive.

how do poor people produce so much garbage?

there’s stealing, the shape of an echo, the mimic of a stance, the yearning to ascend, transcend, that’s pleasing, amiable, soft on the eye because it’s a certain kind of nostalgia, an homage built out of respect and love that serves as a springboard for something different.
then there’s outright thievery, the stabbing in the dark, the punch in the face while the other hand tears away the chain, the foot on the neck as two hands yank out the solitary gold tooth, a mean, vicious taking that screams in your face, nothing can ever be yours.
all things i took i tried to give back somewhere else, someone else, at any given point in time. everything taken from me was always blindsided and in the dark.

this is what i imagine. i imagine him going through the motions the way the addict rustles his way out of bed and dons a tie. i imagine a man walking his dog and watching the animal go on the neighbor’s lawn and not picking it up. i imagine her slipping him vicodin in his morning coffee when she finds out. i imagine a little girl full of romantic fantasies being crushed by the first boy she falls in love with. i imagine a boy standing in front of a mirror first realizing he is a man but also utterly alone. i imagine the unspeakable loss a mother feels when they tell her son was found dead thousands of miles away. i imagine myself writing it all down and never ever keeping up with any of it.

it is a funny time of year, the older i get the more it becomes another cycle of artifice. you want to believe. you want to believe in new beginnings, in the closing of chapters, in some greater structure than the randomness of everyday life. that if you meditate, reflect, squint hard enough, you’ll see the design and you will be able to trace it, follow it, see where it all leads. no guarantee that it would bring you comfort, but at the very least, you’d be able to make sense of it all.