OLD TO BEGIN

is another way of saying "i was so much older then, i'm younger than that now." and it's true. life as i know it reversed, and like benjamin button, i am slowly returning to a certain wide-eyed state. a certain joy in every new thing that appears in front of me. a certain desire to clutch onto anything that has meaning, and a certain delight in everything because everything has meaning.

there is also love. also friendship. also the naiveness of the midnight hour, drunk. all that and the difficulty of understanding certain things, to act upon emotion, or to do precisely that and regret it. or perhaps the terrifying truth that we don't know anything about what is to come. and there is also innocence, and the feeling of being loved, and giving love, which all has not much to do with the making of love. and the unsettling recognition that love can't be made out of nothing, but requires both people to be nothing.

although i write and it comes out perhaps articulate and with some semblance of art and emotion it does not give me as much joy as i thought it would. there is a song which says that 'all is lost if it's not heard.' since i do not want all of this feeling to be lost i will write it even though it is not all of it. it's better to have some of all rather than lose it all.

i like to say lately that i can see stars exploding in other galaxies. or that i can hear the beat of wings of a single bird flying incredibly high in the sky with a group of other geese coming back north for the spring. or that i can smell the specific hibiscus in a low plain next to a cactus outside mexico city. and i can feel the cool ocean waves of the atlantic brush against my feet and soak the bottoms of my jeans. and i hear the voices and melodies of friends and the plucks of strings by calloused tips of fingers.

all that is true because lately i have not been able to write. nothing comes out or if it does it does not suffice. it just means that i have been living a lot of life and have no time to choose the right words. and words are too important to not choose correctly.

but what else can i do, tonight, when life is unbearably lifey and it takes over me. then it's not really me who writes just the moment itself. what else is there to do when eyes though shut don't stop seeing. when i have dreamt so many dreams in the hours i am awake, i am afraid to sleep else be overwhelmed by more dreams. when a cloudy sky with a full white moon beckons for one more cigarette and a few crisp moments to brood among the traffic hum of the city.

it is nearly impossible to sleep with the knowledge of spring, and so many beginnings. that all this life is around me and so much is almost born, being born, is born-again. and then to think of it all also reminds me that something, so many things, have ended.

oh, yes, so many ends and beginnings. beginnings and ends.

and here i am; to not lose it all; to end and begin.