Last Night

The sudden, sober feeling last night, stuck in traffic and sharing a cab with an Oxfordian mum and her two young darling daughters, Olivia and Honor (who was prone to nosebleeds) that he was through living a life filled with 'I don't knows' and hesitations--the realization that what he really hungered for now was the ability to simply say yes or no to things and to stick by his decision, even if it meant breaking someone's heart. He had no idea how this feeling and the episode with this careful, caring mother in the taxi were related (he recalled the way she had pulled sandwiches from her handbag), but lying in bed the next evening, he knew it had clarified his vision of things.

Highs and Lows

Hey, hello, good evening

In praise of the late night phone call. One voice meeting another across a sleepless town, or across the sea, from one city to another. The essence of two lives intertwining. It's something lost during daytime interactions: that softeness, or the closeness you can remember hearing when you used to stretch string between two tin cans, or when somebody cupped their palms around your ear before whispering a secret. There's nothing at stake, no reason for such calls. And this is what makes them beautiful, essential, an overlooked form of loving. Right now, I picture two open windows, a new moon, a fire-escape, some newly open tulips, the flicker of a television set, and the feeling that two people out there in the big wide world are sharing the same sky, sharing the same moment even though they're in two different places.

A thought...

For the girl who kept the banana box in her room...



Tonight singing helpless, helpless, helpless on a walk around the block, this next song surprised me, saved me in my tracks...

'And it's only the giving that makes you what you are...'

I will write soon.