Life May Not Be the Party You Hoped For, But While You’re Here You Might As Well…


It was the floss that did it this time.

Staring at a travel-sized compact of “minty fresh!” floss hanging innocuously from its hook, I felt maudlin all over again. He had been relocated to the other side of the country and all I could think of was the fact that he was looking for a good brand of floss shortly before he left.

It really was the little things that got you.

The other day I was looking for a belt bag for the gym in the luggage department of the same store and I spotted a line of good laptop bags. He needed one of those, too. If he were still living in the area I would instinctively text him about my new find and we would take a look at the laptop bags the next day after he picks me up from the office.

But distance has a way of magnifying little things such as these, giving them greater significance that would otherwise be trivial on an ordinary day.  He still gets to come home twice a month, a fact I greedily drink up like a cold drink on a scorching afternoon.

He is the one I have loved the longest—unadulterated, without pretense– and being apart from him is agony. I try to keep in mind that this is only a temporary arrangement, that sacrifice is a necessity for the fulfillment of a dream much greater and encompassing, and sometimes it helps. But other times I can only take it one day at a time without romanticizing a compact of floss.

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Have you watched those movies (The Weatherman) or music videos (Alanis Morissette’s ‘Thank You’) that contain a scene in which a character is standing still in the foreground while everyone in the background in moving fast forward in a blur? That’s how I feel about my work sometimes. Like everyone else is headed somewhere—a promotion, a transfer, changing jobs—while I just remain stationary behind my desk, a pen in one hand, my boss’s calendar in the other for the past 5 years.

I’ve gone through the not-so-unusual myriad of emotions associated with the life of a job—initial trepidation, eventual adaptation, consistency, restlessness, resignation, apathy. On bad days I hated my bed-tempered boss and resented my routine work, found it to be outright meaningless. On better days, I figured myself lucky enough to have a job—a good one at that—in a world of economic recession, political strife and national discord thrown in for good measure. 

Rather comically, with the recent slew of period novels on European monarchy that’s been sitting on my nightstand table, I imagine myself to be the post-modern corporate version of a lady-in-waiting living in the King’s Court. Not royalty, but close to one. Sitting atop a tower of grandeur beside the dictator monarch, keeping watch over the rest of the townspeople and land below with a marvelous view, chin held up in a regal air, in all her lonely existence.



Where are Hauntings Most Common?


A very interesting read by a
Melissa Mayntz posted on essortment.com.
This sheds some light on several hauntings I’ve experienced so far. Most are visible hauntings, such as a headless white lady, a priest missing his head appearing in a photograph (why can’t they keep their heads on??), a woman in a black dress, long black hair and barefoot leaning over the campus balcony,  a doppelganger impersonating my mom, a hazy black form passing by. I’ve also had sensory hauntings—disembodied voices calling my name, an intense whiff of a recently-departed friend’s cologne emanating in my cube—hearing the toilet seat slam up and down when I’m home alone.  
For fledging occultists like me—happy reading! J
- Marge

Ghosts are one of society’s most readily accepted paranormal phenomena. More than fifty percent of Americans believe in ghosts, and with one in two adults giving credence to apparitions and other ghostly occurrences, it stands to reason that hauntings are quite common. There are different types of hauntings, however, and each classification can occur in a number of locations.

Haunting Locations: Open Portals

While there is no direct basis for the belief that graveyards, cemeteries, and mausoleums are inherently haunted, many ghost hunters and enthusiasts believe that the intense concentration of spiritual and emotional energy present in such places makes them ideal for regular hauntings. Apparitions, or visible manifestations of ghosts, need incredible amounts of energy to appear, and that energy can be harnessed through emotional residue that may become imprinted on a burial site over time from the large number of emotional gatherings. Spirits may be particularly apt to appear near their own burial sites because it is the last place they physically connected with their loved ones.

Because the emotional energies of families, friends, and spirits coalesce in a single location in a cemetery, it may create a portal for ghosts to pass through and become visible or otherwise felt by passersby. Therefore, while the land itself may not possess the energy necessary to conjure a spirit, the accumulation of energies can result in frequent hauntings. Many living people are susceptible to burial site hauntings because their psyche can more readily accept the presence of spirits in such a place. With the high concentration of spiritual energy and the greater mental acceptance of paranormal activity, cemeteries are very common haunting sites.

Haunting Locations: Relationships Revealed

Many hauntings occur in places where the deceased spent a lot of time, such as a private home or workplace. In some cases, this is because the spirit may not comprehend its death and is simply going about its daily routine. For these hauntings, it is imperative for the spirit to have spent a great deal of time at the location prior to its death.

Hauntings can also occur for specific objects rather than locations. For example, a female spirit may become emotionally linked to the engagement ring from a lost love, and her spirit will haunt that ring. If the ring is moved to a different location, the spirit may simply follow the object and continue the haunting in the new location. Jewelry, clothing, furniture, and other everyday objects can easily become haunted, but like locations, the objects must have held great emotional significance for the deceased. These objects are often donated to museums once the heirs grow weary of the spiritual attachment, making museums frequently haunted locations.

Ghosts can be just as sociable as living people. Spirits often congregate in places where many living and dead people can be found, such as hotels, restaurants, and ballrooms, typically older buildings with long histories of social activity. It is believed that the greater concentration of energy in such locations can attract spirits that may not have otherwise appeared.

Hauntings that revolve around emotional and social attachments are not always visible. Visible manifestations, in fact, are among the rarest type of haunting because of the greater energy necessary to sustain an image. Noises such as footsteps, unexplained echoes, doors opening and closing, whispers, and even distinct words or laughter are the most common non-visible hauntings. Smells, radical temperature changes, and unexplained breezes are other examples of sensory hauntings. These types of manifestations are often overlooked or disregarded in busy social establishments.

Haunting Locations: Violent Impressions

The most well-known types of hauntings involve reenactments of tragic, emotionally charged events such as violent death, murder, fights, and other highly volatile situations. In these instances, the ghosts may not know that they have died, or else the death was so sudden that the spirit feels compelled to reenact the event, seeking closure for a life that ended too abruptly. These spirits are usually young, and the deaths were nearly always traumatic. Battlefields are some of the most common haunting sites, along with prisons, crime scenes, taverns, and other areas where violent accidents are likely to have occurred.

Reenactment hauntings are occasionally found in unlikely places. For example, a Civil War soldier may begin to appear in a building constructed decades after the war. In most of these cases, however, an investigation reveals that the land itself is haunted, and the spirit is manifesting itself because it has been disturbed by the construction. Often, if the building is destroyed, the haunting ceases.


The word haunt originates from the Old Norse heimta, meaning to lead home. Many hauntings are related to ghosts going home to reconnect with treasured possessions, revisit locations they revered in life, or reenact tragic events that prevented them from going home. Spirits are generally benevolent, and as otherworldly observers to their hereafter, we should visit haunted locations with courtesy and respect to allow the spirits to rest in peace.



Homeward Bound in the Backseat

Time moving forward only when we leave a place behind. Counting Crows wailing about Mr. Jones in my ear, nuanced memories from between the pockets of notes. Back to a simpler time of brown lace-up boots, long gangly limbs like a pony and squinting at the sun through wispy bangs. Tempting fate by the seatbelt hanging loose. Indian seat clutching a stuffed pig, blinding my peripheral vision by the oncoming glare of cars. Static hair scratching my scarred cheek.

Pondering about remembering the past two years later in soft light, once the world switches to florescent absolute. Lene Marlin finishes saying all she can say. Cruising past a weary life of shoppers, children running on the side of the dirt road, a street vendor leaning on his dusty wares. A bridge being mended.

The same stars in the sky people have been looking at for thousands of years. We are all connected, a sedate procession of ships passing in the night. Faintly twinkling out a Morse code of history of all the nights that came before. The moon a silent impartial witness. The back of my mother’s head I know as well as the palm of my hand. The right side of my head threatening to throb again in a days-old nuisance dance.

My feet sullenly left out in the cold field of the backseat. The legs don’t mind. A glance at my hibernating phone. An image of my beloved. Sarah McLachlan agrees, your love is better than ice cream. Can you still call yourself a writer if you haven’t written anything in the past six months?  Losing a treasured childhood friend, whose life became so full it couldn’t hold me anymore. A week ago she ran away from me in a dream. Even in my subconscious I can’t keep her. I am eight again.

Silvery lights tinkerbelling patterns on the seat. Smiling at the thought of meeting Mulder and Scully again in late July.  Six years after. Life changes so stealthily, uncaring if you’re present or not.

The Virgin, Martyr, Saint, Witch. Just when you expect Coelho to start getting preachy again he proves you wrong. Where is that story I’ve written about Hades and fried bananas when I was 14? The stars are still. Time slows. Home.



My Sun Sign Ü

She’s not always going to say the kind of things you want to hear. Most of the time, she’ll curl your sideburns with her remarkable, flat statements and her embarrassing questions. But now and then she’ll say something so special and splendid it will make you feel like singing.


You may need a sample. Scene: Coffee shop. You’ve just gotten up the courage to tell her you love her, but before you can say it, she looks at you with wide-open, guileless blue eyes-or forthright, steady brown ones- and asks you curiously, “How do you feel about being so short? Does it make you neurotic or anything?” While you’re gulping, trying manfully to recover, she’ll add, “You shouldn’t care about it. Lots of men were short. Like Napoleon. And Fiorello LaGuardia.” That’s almost adding insult to injury, but before you get a chance to walk out, thinking no woman ever deserved such ungallant treatment more, shell muse dreamily, “I hate men who look like bean poles. You’re perfect. I noticed when we were walking over here tonight-we measure just right together.”


Sit back down. You’re staying. For a long time. A friendly, frank Sagittarius girl has just wound herself around your heart with her own, peculiar brand of charm. She’ll always be a little outspoken, because she sees the world exactly as it is, even while she’s wearing those ridiculous, rose-tinted glasses. That, you must admit, is quite a talent. It’s not everyone who can apply clear, reasonable logic to every situation, and retain the happy faculty of believing things will get better or else deciding to accept them or what they are.

Sagittarius females are regular Pollyannas. It will cut when she tells you she wishes you would make more money, but then she’ll add, “Of course, too much money can make people selfish. Maybe it’s lucky that you’re poor.” Admittedly, it’s sort of a left-handed optimism, but you’ll get used to it. This girt will never lie to you. Sometimes, you may wish she would. Show curiosity about how she spends the nights you’re not with her, and you’ll get a detailed, perfectly honest report of the letters she writes to that handsome intern she met last summer on her vacation and how many dates she turns down on the phone. She may even relate her troubles with insomnia, brought on when she lies awake at night wondering if maybe what she feels for you is friendship instead of love. You’ll feel like yelling at her, “For Pete’s sake, lie a little once in a while, can’t you? A man has his pride.” Don’t yell too loud. You’ll offend her, and she’s not exactly noncombustible herself. Sagittarius girls have been known to fly into some pretty fiery rages.


There’s one thing you’ll have to learn right away, or the relationship will never get off the ground. When you want her to do something, ask her. Don’t tell her. The cave man technique went out with Tarzan and Jane, as far as she’s concerned. She enjoys being protected, but she doesn’t want to be ordered around. Not even her mother gets away with that. Who are you, that you should top her mother? She may have an Aries mother, and if a Mars woman can’t boss her around, no male on earth is going to do it. However, there’s a queer twist to her nature. Although she dislikes being bossed, especially in public, when she’s testing you for firmness, be firm. Jupiter women can’t stand weak, wishy-washy men. If she gets too high-spirited and her clever tongue gets too sarcastic, or she threatens some action that really incenses you, give her a light touch of the Tarzan treatment. Just enough to keep her in line. Like “You do that and I’ll break your neck.” She may react with surprising meekness if she thinks you’re serious. A Sagittarius female has no in-tendon of giving up her individuality for any male, but she kind of likes to know you think of her as a girl.


She may confuse you, but that’s nothing to what she does to herself. Many a Sagittarius girl mistakes friendship for love and love for friendship. If you’re one of those old-| fashioned men who prefer evasiveness and timidity in your women, you’d better look for another Bingo partner. This young lady has bright, frank ways with men, and she’s not going to play any silly games of “Guess how I feel” or “Guess what I think!” How she feels and what she thinks are identical with how she acts and what she says. Her outspoken bluntness naturally causes misunderstandings, and a good share of fiery battles, let alone hurt feelings, but it doesn’t crush her spirit. Jupiter pride comes to the surface and rescues her in a crisis, allowing her to pass off her heartache as the biggest joke of the season. Inside, she may be weeping, but she’ll employ such clever wit in answering the questions of friends about the break that they’ll decide the whole affair was a harmless flirtation on her part. Little will they guess how she soaks her pillow every night, wondering what she could possibly have said that fractured everything. It might have been when she told him not to stop by her apartment the time he called from the lobby around midnight-because she was “busy talking with a man who had a few problems.” Actually, the man was her brother-in-law, but with the peculiar Sagittarius twist of leaving out the core of the story, she neglected to mention that. Why should she have to explain herself? (All Sagittarians show a raging, righteous anger when their integrity is doubted.) Or it could have been when he asked her if she minded him bringing his little sister along to the movies and she blurted out, “Gosh, I hope that doesn’t mean she’s going to be hanging around all the time when we’re married.” She may have sincerely liked the young girl, but the natural Sagittarian fear of being suffocated by in-laws brought on her thoughtless and forthright statement. Now she misses his sister as much as the man, but it’s too late to explain what she meant. Besides, no one would understand.


Impasses like this are impossible for her to fathom, for all her logical mental processes, and often lead the Jupiter girl into a never-never land of romance, not knowing where the fire might flame up, or why, and afraid of being burned when it does. Then she’ll play it too cool and be unable to take anyone seriously, least of all herself. She’ll flirt openly, but without any intention of making it a lasting or a forever thing, and gain the reputation of a cold heartless female. A fire sign is never cold or heartless, but then there are a lot of astrologically ignorant men out there who don’t know that. If such a state of affairs should happen to lead to spinsterhood, she certainly won’t be a dry and bitter old maid. She’ll still clown with life and have a barrel of fun. She’ll have a dozen interests to replace a man-and enjoy every one of them.


Of course, you’re not interested in a Sagittarian spinster. You plan to make one your wife someday. (At least, I hope you have honorable intentions. This poor girl has enough problems without you setting out to seduce her.) Let’s stop dwelling on promiscuity, and think about marriage. Like the male Sagittarian, she’s a little skittish about wedlock. You’ll need to use some bright, colorful pieces of tinsel as bait to get her pinned down (to accepting your proposal, that is). She’s breezy and unconventional in her relationships with men. Since she considers herself your equal, she may copy your mannerisms, as well as wear your sweater. If she also likes sports and camping, as lots of Sagittarian females do, you may have trouble distinguishing her from the boys. But she’s not the same. For one thing, your sweater looks different on her. Not that Jupiter women are offensively masculine by nature. They can be the softest, most feminine women you ever squeezed. It’s just that she pals around with so many men you get used to seeing her in the crowd-everywhere but in the steam room and the gym. Since she’s so scrupulously honest and aboveboard, she may be a little careless of her reputation and contemptuous of the hypocrisy demanded by society. If you question her about it, she’ll be plain-spoken. She’ll probably t«U you that waltzing in at midnight doesn’t indicate promiscuity any more than coming home at a more conventional hour indicates innocence. She knows her morals are above reproach, and that’s all that matters. Naturally she’s dead wrong. What other people think matters very much to a female reputation. But try to understand her attitude. Don’t think she’s fast and loose just because she laughs at a few jokes, usually without the slightest idea of what they’re all about (the subtlety of the double-entendre often escapes Sagittarius). So- she stays up to watch the sunrise from the George Washington Bridge (or from the top of a silo, if you live in the country)-that doesn’t mean she’s the wildest girl in town.


The truth is, she’s a trusting child at heart. Her outlook is so naive it makes her vulnerable to wolves, con artists and phonies (though oddly enough, not in other areas, just in romance). Forget about how cleverly she argues and how startlingly logical she can be. All that has nothing to do with her heart. Her mind isn’t under discussion. It’s bright and intelligent, and well able to take care of itself in any emergency. But her heart is defenseless. It falls down and gets bruised quite often.


That’s another thing. She’s slightly clumsy. At times when the Sagittarius girl strides down the street like a thoroughbred horse, you’ll think she’s the most graceful woman you’ve ever watched-until she stumbles on a crack in the sidewalk, awkwardly grabs the awning over the fruit stand to catch her balance and upsets two crates of oranges. The owner may swear a little, but he’ll soon shrug his shoulders, tell her to skip it, and hand her some grapes. The sunny Sagittarian disposition can melt the hardest hearts. Now and then, this girl will remind you of a clumsy puppy dog, wagging its friendly tail, and walking all over your feet. But then friendly puppy dogs do get lots of people to love them and feed them. Of course, dogs are a little cheaper to feed. The typical Jupiter girl has a large appetite. She likes good food and wine, nice clothes, and when she travels, she likes to go first class. Sagittarians are extravagant by nature (unless the Moon is in Capricorn or there’s a Virgo ascendant). Money for the sake of money doesn’t interest them, and it takes quite a bit of training to teach most of them the meaning of a dollar bill. Check her ascendant carefully before you loan her your credit card.


The Sagittarian girl you’re involved with may be in show business, because lots of them are drawn by the lure of the footlights. If so, start out on the right foot by expecting her to put her career first, until she tires of it. The sweet sound of applause and the thrill of the encore will ring in her ears with more conviction than all the romantic phrases you can conjure up. Never force her to choose between pleasing you and the excitement of pleasing whole gobs of people at once with her sunshine personality. After a while she’ll grow disgusted with the hypocrisy and artificial glitter she finds all around her in the world of show business, and she’ll come running home to try domesticity with someone who is real. You. Someone who believes honesty is beautiful and deception is ugly. You again. Leaving a career won’t remove the wings from her heels forever. They were fastened there at birth. The travel bug will always be nearby to give her a case of wandering fever. Vacation with her when you can; otherwise let her go off to ride the carousel herself, and trust her. She loves you, not the clowns and organ grinders she likes to pass the time with.


Because of her casual attitude toward romance and her shyness of marriage, you may think she’s lacking in sentiment. You are so mistaken. She’ll cry rivers at sad movies and read poetry with wet eyes. She’s probably saved every note you ever wrote her, scraps of the flowers you bought her in the rain, and the tickets from the hockey game where she met you.


As for her talent as a homemaker, be brave. And be patient. Sagittarius girls are acutely bored by the confinement of dusting and mopping. No sooner does she make a bed than it gets unmade. Gosh, you’d think the darned thing would stay neat for a few days anyway, it was such a drag tucking in those sheets at the corners. She’ll hate it all with a purple passion. When she has a home of her own, however, she’ll probably swallow her distaste. She’ll prefer that you get her a maid if you can possibly afford one. If not, she’ll doggedly keep it shining Her mother will never believe it. That sloppy child waxing the coffee table? Impossible. Pride and the eternal Sagittarius logic does it. She needs to be surrounded with beauty and cleanliness to be true to herself. The message reaches her that, if she doesn’t wipe up the linoleum, no one else will. If she was forced by circumstances to do a lot of chores in childhood, she may rebel at first, but she’ll eventually reason it out, and settle down to sweeping the comers with a minimum of resentment.


Her cooking? Well-you can never tell. Maybe you’d just better eat out on weekends. If she manages decent meals through the week, you can’t expect her to keep a perfect record on Saturdays and Sundays, too. Most Sagittarian women aren’t exactly ecstatic in the kitchen (unless there’s a Taurus, Cancer or Capricorn ascendant). But she can whip up a mean, fancy dessert when she’s trying to cheer you out of the blues. Her own moods can be terrors, but they’re rare, and they last so briefly you’ll hardly notice them. When she’s really hurt, her tongue can be bitterly sarcastic. But she’ll forget what she said almost before she’s finished the sentence, and she won’t understand why you want to dwell on it. This is not the woman for a brooding, melancholy man. Gloom and pessimism, can actually make her physically ill.


Her children will probably adore her. Shell be their buddy, and have a circus playing with them. Once she’s over her initial fear of responsibility, she’ll cope with diapers and daily baths like a crisp, efficient nurse. Almost everything she does she does well, with grace, when she finally decides to learn it. Just like the big people, the little ones will get a good dose of her cheerful optimism and outspoken remarks. If they survive her blunt truthfulness, they’ll grow up thinking she’s the greatest big sister a kid ever had. She’ll read them funny stories with happy endings, and take them on sudden, impulsive picnics in the woods to look for the three bears. (She half believes they’re hiding there herself.) Her youngsters will probably be well-dressed, but not fussily so, and bright-mannered. If they pick up a few unconventional tricks from her, like making footprint curtains by spreading monk’s cloth on the floor, stepping barefoot into yellow paint and walking across the material-at least you won’t be raising a houseful of conformists. Her honesty will mark their characters. If they don’t find those three bears after a careful search under all the fir trees, she’ll probably tell them to forget it-it’s a phony. But she will have looked first. The child who wrote the editor of the New York Sun to ask if there was really a Santa Claus just had to have a Sagittarius Sun sign. Moon or ascendant. She probably raised her own children by the frank, yet idealistic answer of “Yes, Virginia . . .” The Jupiter mother may have to watch a tendency to be lax in discipline, except when she’s tired or angry. That’s the wrong time for spankings.


You’ll have a lovely hostess. No one entertains as graciously as a Sagittarian woman, not even her Leo sisters, who are no slouches themselves in the social department. There’s a quality about her sunny, outgoing friendliness that makes people feel deeply welcome, from the garbage man to your boss. A Sagittarian breaks the ice instantly at the stiffest affairs, though she may raise a few eyebrows, too.


As long as you let her call her soul her own, and don’t make her feel tied down, your Sagittarius Pollyanna will give you a triple bonus: her loyalty, her trust and her affection. The three are inseparable, because when she gives her love, her friendship trots right along beside it.

The Jupiter woman is an incurable idealist. And here’s a secret perhaps she never told you: She fell in love with you many years ago, when she was a little girl and wished on the new Moon for someone to share her honest heart. There were lots of times when she thought she had found you and was disappointed. But when you finally came along, she knew you right away, because you were a gentle clown with a dream or two of your own who took her hand and showed her the way to the stars.



Distant Shore

And tonight once more
you drift away to follow your calling,
your destiny so deeply etched within the blood
flowing through your veins
that you can’t keep away for long
 
And tonight once more
I stand here, waiting for your return;
Penelope to your Odysseus
a vigil instead of an adventure
watching with wistful longing as you
disappear into the horizon that feels like
a miniscule eternity every time
 
I try to corral my love for you in between
the spaces during moments of your absence
spend more time loving you through
memory and hope and faith
to keep me from drowning in this habitual silence
 
I fell in love with a wanderer
so I must have seen this
part of the territory
just as plainly as this fear–
always, always…
of the constant permanence
the greater distance you sail to chase your rainbows
you might begin to lose sight of the shore
and not look back


Feet Under the Covers at 3 AM

I have a nagging feeling that refuses to go away, no matter what I do. It is a realization that I keep on shrugging off like a persistent bee hovering annoyingly over my shoulder in all its buzzing glory, falsely believing that if I ignore it long enough, it will change its mind and leave me alone.

At times I try to lure it onto alternative paths or detours as a distraction tactic, not unlike waving a bunch of shiny keys in front of a cooing baby, metal glinting in the kitchen light as he tries to grab it in his chubby fist, gurgling in benign happiness.

Momentarily it is fooled. But as twilight drains day of its color, its gray pallor deepening into the blackness of night, this truth will creep up to my bed to lie soundlessly on the pillow next to mine, watching the back of my disheveled head with patient eyes. It returns to its solid, undiluted and unbribed form that nudges groggy undesirable elements awake: fear, worry, trepidation.

Being human breaks a limitation, isn’t that how it goes? You are never more human than in the middle of the night, lying awake in the inky darkness, all your fears looming over you, crowding close. Stripped of rational sense only the facade of daylight can provide, trying to escape for even a scant precious moments with both feet tucked firmly under the covers, as sleep finally, sympathetically pulls you under.



Thought of the Day

There comes a point in your life when you realize who matters, who never did, who won’t anymore, and who always will. So don’t worry about people from your past… there’s a reason why they didn’t make it to your future. :)


Floundering

black sea of bitter molasses
weighty clutch of velveteen claws
in the darkest part of night
that nameless hour where
no soul wants to be caught awake
a silent scream emanating from deep within
the caverns of elemental despondence
reverberating through the intricate tapestry
of omnipresent fear
subliminal to eyes wide open
sitting at my desk with the clock
ticking, ticking at 10:53 am and ever after
i am drowning


A Nocturnal Internalization

You need to make something of yourself, because at this point all you have to show for yourself are a dusty collection of books bearing cracked spines, candles with half-burnt wicks, a couple of dog-eared journals filled with scribbles of wistful utopian whimsy and defiant eccentricities– a self-portrait of chronic melancholia– and a half-baked resume bearing a job history that begins brightly then over the course of a few years, ends in a way that undoes itself, seemingly without any effort at all.

Another crossroads presenting itself before me. Several steps back and forth on a road that is so well-worn, the painted stripe designed to keep me in line has faded away. No matter how many footsteps I take or how far I crane my head, the crossroads is still within sight or out of the corner of my red-rimmed eye.

A parting of ways is in order. But how long before I can find the elusive yellow brick road? A path leading to the horizon and beyond; not another fork, rabbit hole, or worse, a dead end.

But I don’t own a pair of ruby shoes, and that song about a place over the rainbow makes me cringe.



6750

This is where it all began:
 
unwinding after a long day of
tax policies, legal provisions
case studies, heartache
burdened down by the weight of notations
business books and the future
 
i set foot upon the threshold of this chic
over-commercialized coffee shop
a twenty-minute walk from campus
in the heart of the business district
 
mocha frappucino was the staple
a cozy little table overlooking the city
sharing stories, dreams, fears with friends
or with a trusted journal on rainy afternoons
 
armed with caffeine and cynicism
we radiated naivete, burgeoning idealism
impatiently waiting for our beautiful lives to begin
while leaning on the backs of plush velvet chairs
lulled by whirling blenders, rustling newspapers, muted chatter
creating a comforting cocoon sprinkled with cinnamon and jazz
 
five years later i return to this place with
lines on my face, shadows in my eyes
toting a sharper sense of cynicism and
a first-hand understanding of realism
i have set foot upon so many coffee shops since
but never have they felt like forgotten pockets of timelessness