He stole a moment, just as he had for the evening. His empty apartment waited for him, just as he’d left it. It was just a space, a placeholder for moments not yet realized. He laughed, thinking about how he had wrestled the emptiness there and made it a force to be reckoned with. Space needs to be filled, and hearts need proximity and warmth to flourish.
It was exactly midnight when he stopped and exited the vehicle. The thermometer on his car read eighteen degrees. He didn’t feel the chill. Behind him, a moon that experts would describe as waning gibbous shone brightly above him with a wistful corona.
The fountain in front of him streamed up, illuminated underneath by shining beacons of light. The water jets found their way upward, fighting the battle with penetrating cold. Beneath, the encroaching ice formed and eddied. The surface of the artificial pond reflected the brilliant and ephemeral radiance of the lights as they created dancing shadows. He resisted taking a picture, knowing that the moment was impossible to grasp.
Instead, he recited his gratitude list as he stood on the pavement near the pond. If you were close enough, you might hear his voice whisper. Even if you didn’t hear the words, you would recognize the tenor of sincere hope and prayer for more moments.
He felt a kinship with that fountain, one left to fight the cold and ice.
He turned and looked up at the moon, a lifeless rock hovering countless miles above him.
He stole this moment.
He drove back to his apartment. It was no longer empty, not just because he filled it upon his arrival. But because he was filled in a way that’s impossible to explain to people who don’t experience it. The moon and the fountain danced in his head as he waited for the stolen moment to fade.
“Pretzel fish,” he whispered. And he laughed, his voice echoing in the empty apartment. It was not a hollow echo. The moon and the fountain’s light now existed there.
If you’re like me, you read a wide variety of blogs. Not all are created equal.
I have two to recommend to you. Both are written by the same “clever girl” mind. She’s smart, focused, and also writing through her experiences as a human being. She isn’t a writer by profession; that will probably change over time.
The first is a blog dedicated to her ordeal, anguish, and recovery as she deals with her life intersecting with a villainous human being.
The second is one she recently started in response to the amassing stockpile of creativity she fills her head with. I expect great things to blossom from her second blog.
If you love someone, you value their peace of mind, happiness, and ability to live their lives freely.
And, in a normal relationship, no matter what the reason, each person maintains the right of silence and distance or any range of contact between the opposites of communication and disengagement. Each gets to set their boundaries.
In a toxic relationship, the other person needs distance to feel safe.
Unfortunately, there are times when we have to resort to our agreed-upon set of laws to insist that a person honor another person’s boundaries. Unfortunately, it’s required in some situations where someone has the mental inability to respect another person’s right to autonomy.
That time has passed.
No means no.
No amount of cleverness will protect you from the inevitable claxon call of justice.
I don’t need to understand the complexities of the legal system where you might be.
I’m reminding you that Southern Justice has its standards.
The subject of my post has no idea whatsoever that I’m writing this.
You are accountable.
Stop.
I don’t ask twice.
No means no.
Give the person you allege to love the ability to live a full life, absent your presence, words, or influence.
I’ve asked nicely. If you want to know what Bobby Dean has instilled in me, keep playing stupid.
Rajid sat on the porch, his legs hanging off the rough-cut planks. The sun hadn’t yet risen. Next to him, his hand held a cup of coffee, cooling and forgotten. His restless mind was trapped in nostalgia, the kind that both warms and chills. He couldn’t believe he was sitting on a porch that he’d built, much less at 4:20 a.m. The cool breeze felt like a new life.
He remembered the day that the idea for the primitive cottage occurred to him. No one knew it, but it was the morning that he decided that he wasn’t sure he wanted to be alive for another year. Depression wasn’t normal for him. It held him in a close grip for months, growing like a wildflower in his mind. Though he looked normal to everyone he met, the feedback loop of self-destruction grew and controlled him.
He went to work, drained and resigned. Instead of working on his reports, he absent-mindedly scrolled through the ads his company helped place. He spotted the old cottage on the bottom of the real estate listings—the part of the page where properties sat and languished without interest. The dilapidated cottage was ugly and barren. He could see the missing clapboards, the windows that didn’t match, and the pitched roof. For the first time in months, he felt the stirrings of something optimistic. Without realizing it, he formulated a plan in the back of his mind.
Two weeks later, after resigning from his job, he liquidated everything he owned; the ugly cottage was his once closing finalized. He didn’t wait, however. His garage was filled with paints, windows, and miscellany for his new home. He didn’t consciously realize that the depression that gripped him disappeared as activity and planning overtook his waking moments. When he handed the keys to his larger house to the real estate agent, he felt like he was surrendering his ghost.
Every waking moment filled with nails, saws, and videos for DIY enthusiasts. He’d never been so exhausted in his life. Each morning, though, he crawled out of the sleeping bag on the worn porch, revitalized. He drank his coffee while sitting on either the front porch or the back one. The back porch was almost unusable when he got the keys to the cottage. During the day, he stopped only to eat a quick sandwich and a piece of fruit. After a few weeks, he started listening to music again, humming and singing along to familiar songs he’d once loved. On a particular Thursday, he realized that he’d been whistling along loudly to several songs. He smiled to himself. His skin browned and his body shed itself of all the weight that inactivity and inertia had accumulated.
In the late evenings, he sometimes drank a small coffee cup full of whiskey and used a temporary construction light to sit and read. He didn’t miss his television. He crawled inside his sleeping bag each night, thinking of all the things he’d do tomorrow. After three months, he stopped laughing at the idea that he might not see the next tomorrow.
Last night, he finished the wood plank floor in the living area of the cottage. He sat on the rough wood cross-legged, looking around the room. It was his and every finished surface echoed his sensibilities. He woke up the next morning at 4, his body stiff from the wood underneath him. He could sleep anywhere now and be at peace. In his previous life, his thousand-dollar mattress wasn’t enough to give him comfort. Somehow, he’d stripped his life down to activity, the bare minimum of food, and the absence of thoughts about himself.
He swung his legs back and forth and made the small jump down to the ground below. As he landed and stood straight up, he turned to look at the simple shutters and the porch. Everything was dark, with just enough illumination to see the outlines of his work. He nodded.
This place was his, as was his life again. He turned to walk up the railroad tie porch steps and make another cup of coffee. While it perked, he would listen to his muse and decide what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked, knowing the answer.
She was already wrist-deep in her bowl of ice cream, her legs tucked carelessly under one another in her favorite chair.
She smiled, letting a gush of liquid ice cream run across her lips. She tried to slurp it back inside but the ice cream dripped across her shirt. She looked up at him, sheepishly, then smiled all the way across her face.
He shook his head. “What am I supposed to eat?”
“Duh!” she half-hollered. “Get over here.” She winked.
He walked across the floor and sat next to her chair, his arm draped across her legs. As she spooned another bite of ice cream, he closed his eyes and opened his mouth wide. She airplaned the spoon toward his face and put the spoon inside his mouth.
He opened his eyes and laughed, savoring the ice cream.
He said, “Yum” in a gravelly voice at least fifteen times, knowing she would playfully object to his exaggerated enthusiasm.
“Here, have another bite of MY ice cream, then.” She airplaned another bite into his mouth.
They both laughed.
As he stood up and gave her a peck across the top of her head, he said seriously, “What’s for dessert, though?”
She threw her head back and laughed, her voice dropping an octave.
I’m stealing a moment. Sitting by the creek and the trail. Though I love all types of weather, with the breeze on me and the sun on my head, it’s hard to imagine a better moment. I’ve had a few surprises, each of them making me wonder why I ever doubted my optimism. The beautiful vista doesn’t negate any of the valleys I have walked through ~ each of them temporarily giving me pangs of self-doubt. Were y’all sitting here with me, I would tell a stupid joke, one which would hopefully make y’all snort. We might look up at the arborcast sky and know that the moment will pass. The shadows under the trees are just that: the sun will soon turn and glancingly illuminate the previous shadows, each in their own time. Like I always do, I pause for a little bit of gratitude. Meanwhile, the breeze passes over me, a whisper of things to come.
He walked along the slippery path, the warm sun hitting his back. Around him, the blanket of snow melted lazily, and the tree limbs grew lighter as the burden of snow melted and clumped away. The air was cold and crisp, but no wind caressed him. He would have welcomed a cold wind to challenge the torrents eddying around in his head.
He learned a new lesson recently, but it was an intangible and elusive one, its tentacles tingling around the fringes of his thoughts. He couldn’t help but to indict and convict himself repeatedly.
Early in the morning, he noted her absence from his notifications. He watched as the 14,000 messages disappeared. He thought he was deleting just one because of his unfamiliarity with the app. He had saved several of the great stories written in tandem, and for that, he was thankful. It felt a little like he was emptying as he watched the unexpected progress bar work its way across his phone.
She opened up to him the shared experience of writing stories like an artful duet; it was one he hadn’t expected but also recognized immediately as innate. Even if their connection had remained at writing stories, it would have filled him. He was outmatched from the beginning. Of course, there was more than just writing, as sublime and fulfilling as that was. The ‘more’ was a welcome shock to him, full of firsts and laughter.
He wasn’t quite sure what he had done wrong, but he knew with certainty that she hadn’t been guilty of any misdeed. Which only left him accused and guilty.
Anyone who says that you can’t forge a connection over the expanse of geography is wrong. Without the obstacle of space between, they would not have misstepped as they danced. Proximity parts the clouds. In so many ways, interacting with ideas, laughter, and clarity is a much better way to get inside someone’s head. But nearness would have erased the divide that ultimately undid their overlap.
He learned that people who make such connections with warmth and laughter are rare. He had let one down. He found himself paying the price with empty moments. Instinctively, he looked at his phone again to see it blank.
He walked faster and faster, knowing he could not outpace the absence.
He continued to walk, his eyes watching his shadow lengthen. After thirty minutes, he stopped and waved, wondering whether his affirmation would travel through time and geography.
He whispered to himself as he started walking again, the sun on his back. Only the scattered pine cones beneath his feet heard him.
I made a painted 6″ X 24″ porcelain floor tile. I love the word “redacted!” When I use it, I get to circumspectly communicate the unsaid. Whether it is snarky, serious, or a feeling.
You can fill the blank with whatever you think life is and what makes it worthwhile. Some of the answers y’all might provide are ones that might surprise the people around you.
I wish you’d be comfortable enough to share the unshared, say the unsaid, and live the unlived. The path we’re on tends to narrow as we get older until we find ourselves inching along, if at all.
Youth, age, loss, love, optimism, and above all, laughter.
I always loved the song “Tiny Dancer.” In 2017, another video version came out. I missed it until recently. As with so many great songs, I hear it differently now that I’ve experienced more of the buffer that life offers. Some menu items are bitter, some sweet. But we are all standing at the same buffet. None of us experience it the same way, even when our Venn diagram overlaps. That’s the mystery of life that makes it so sublime.
Because I’m a “moment in time” writer, this video somehow captures the nuances of the full range of our obstacles and emotions. If I could write a story that captures this breadth of emotion, I’d be proud.
We are all stepping forward with our own particular obstacles, joys, and struggles. Some of us are, at this moment, feeling alive, remorse, love, laughter, anxiety, or optimism. Many of these emotions are privately experienced. They don’t have to be.
Wherever you are and whatever you make of this Sunday, remember that there are always people who love you. And more importantly, I hope you love at least a piece of yourself. There’s only one of you, after all.
