There’s nothing out there ‘in the world’ that you can really use to measure time. You can measure space by taking out a yardstick. There it is: three feet. There is that much space there. But a minute, a week, a decade? There is nothing you can hold up that actually is any of those things. The only measurement is that organ of life growing deep inside your soul. That feeling in you that you’ve been here for awhile? That’s as close as we get to measuring time.

I suppose there are markers. I’m different now than I’m used to be. I know that because my sister gave me pajama pants for Christmas and I decided that I like them. In the olden days I would make fun of people for wearing something just to go to sleep, like they were dressing up for their dreams. I probably won’t wear them to bed though because I can’t imagine wearing pants to bed. Don’t people know what blankets are for?

(ah, there’s that old defiant social critic)

How else am I different besides dipping my toe in the water of pajama pants? Well, I walk around city streets a lot more than I used to. I used to run, and when I would run I would well up a lot of meaning inside me. Everyone has a place where they well up a lot of meaning inside them. Running is different than walking though. You can’t really put your head down while you run.

Meet my family, but you won’t notice the tear marks

Meet my beliefs, but you won’t notice the fear marks

Meet my friends, but you won’t notice the wear marks

In Mexico where I was there were no stop signs or stoplights, just taxis honking as they glided through intersections. There were many small shops with seating outside until you got to the fences with the graffiti on them that lined the darker streets.The air was very warm as I walked along with my hands in my pockets and I thought ‘Some people only have their families, some people have everything but a family’.

I don’t think people know how depressing it is when they’re on their phones. It just leaves everyone else with this feeling ‘just think what this interaction could have been’.

Two people sit in opposite rooms with their backs to the door, each waiting for an apology from the other.

No matter how beautiful you think the world is, or how amazed you are that God loves you, or how many lofty words and great quotes you agree with on a day, love always ends up a very difficult thing to do.

The future is waiting for so much. What happened to all the rains these fertile lands used to know? Were we not promised much in our youth? Do our souls stop growing with our limbs? Why do I know but not feel that I will die?

I could use a weekend away where I told someone about everything.

I was promised snow tonight. They told me it was going to snow and it’s not snowing. Someone owes me an explanation. Where is all the snow?  And what is that feeling I have as I stand on my porch that I feel must be common to all humans?

It only takes one line to get to know someone.  If you know everything in the world you let people know in the first thing you say.  True self-doubt cannot be masked.

What if all fish were lost?  It’s all just water and water and water.  How do they find their way?

I asked a girl ‘Are you going to remember this?’ and she said ‘What?’ and I said ‘This time right now’.  She did not think long before she said no.  I said that was crazy.  She asked why it was crazy and I said it’s because that meant we were standing in an empty vault of her future memories, ghosts in a place she would never return to again.  I could say anything to her and it would not matter.  But I didn’t, probably because I was thinking about how the present is a very impoverished place.

But not always – sometimes you will be there, deep in the universe as it grows as a fetus, where you can finally feel a heartbeat, see the hope of its life – and you will think ‘Ah, this is what it’s for.’

Until you’re driving home, and you realize that now that’s just a memory too.

Time.  It’s the one thing you never stop learning as a lesson.  We maintain the false belief that this is the present and are continually being corrected.

I like all the emotional shapes we can describe, the life we can tell about by saying ‘all my islands are sunk in the deep’.  But even more than that I wonder about the things words cannot scratch.  The places in us that stay that way forever. The people that died deep in their cages.

I think of all the nights I didn’t sit down to write.  (almost tonight.)

The idea of generations is beautiful and very fulfilling.  People like to have children because it is then so easy to say what you meant.  It can be spoken in the single word of ‘mother’ or ‘father’.  But what happens to those that are outside the continuation of generations?  They want to matter!  They want to mean something too.  But they do not have the tangible human being to hold up and say ’Look! I was in the world and made something great so I am a part of everything’.  So they will set about other projects: exploring, inventing, working.  And they will feel something good because of this, but there will always be a lingering tinge of sadness, something held back, an understanding that they were not fully part of the true mechanics of the world’s story.

In the history of the world I wonder what the overall success rate of the words ‘Don’t go’ is, and I get sad that I don’t think it’s very high. 

and ultimately it’s zero.

What I have found is you can scream ‘GET IT RIGHT’ in your head all day long and still end up failing completely.

I feel like there are people who like to know what time it is and people who don’t like to know what time it is, and this probably means something great and deep about them.  But I don’t think I’ll think about it.  Maybe it’s just enough to know which one it is and then to have fun no matter what. 

I saw a raccoon yesterday.  That means it was a very good day.

I was in Ocean City all day.

I have felt a very deep love for everything I’ve been seeing recently.  It’s too bad that’s not something you can say.  Not that you are not allowed to say it – you just can’t express it.  You can just go around and be really happy and wonder what’s all this complaining business and always remember that ‘I’m not competing with anybody’. 

My little brother said: “We should go Christmas shopping together!”
Philip: “Why? We never go Christmas shopping together.”
Paul: “Well you know more about it than I do.”
Philip: “You just go to the mall and walk around.”
Paul: “But you have money. And I have some money. And this way we can put our money together and buy people presents.”
Philip: “You mean we combine our money and then only buy people one present between the two of us? Is that what this all about?”
Paul: (adamant)”No!”
Paul: (confessing) “….Yes.”

Today I saw a girl on the street with one of those artist hats that supposedly painters in France wear.  I wonder if she got drenched later.  There was a girl at a street corner that got soaked by a car driving by.  A wave-wall just obliterated her.  She immediately guffawed and rolled her eyes up in her head.  Her expression said ‘That was my bad.  Completely my bad.  Why was I standing so close to the street??’

Last night my friend Kyle told me what he took to be the funniest thing he’s ever heard.  A moment later I noticed someone had sent me a digital file and I opened it and it was a recording of them laughing.

(at a cafe)
Girl 1: He gets up and pees in his boxers with no shirt on.  And he says nothing.  For three days he stays in my room and doesn’t say a single word to me.  Like, can I even get a “hello”? 
Girl 2: I don’t get it, why is your roommate still dating him?
Girl 1: She’s in love with him.

In the same cafe across the room there were two guys playing chess.  One guy was sitting down and the other guy was standing up with his hands sprawled on either side of the chess board as he leaned over it like an intimidating father.  I thought ‘Dang, are there no chairs left for that guy?’ and I looked around and spotted a chair he could use.  I was about to see if I could get the chair for him when I noticed that the guy had a chair right next to him.  I guess it was just really time to play chess.

I am miserable when I’m not vulnerable, and when I’m vulnerable – that’s even worse.

The chess thing reminds me of a week ago when I came across the Wikipedia for ‘bushido’.  I came across that because I was looking up ‘chivalry’ for Paul who kept saying ‘That’s not chivalry!’ whenever someone did something he didn’t like.  Bushido is the samurai equivalent of chivalry.  Its code requires frugality, loyalty, and honor unto death.  I thought: ‘This is great, I’ll remember this and partially be a samurai in my heart, and I’ll impress everyone by knowing what this is.’

A few days later Nelson came into our restaurant.  Nelson is a regular who is always reading a really big book.  This time it was ‘Classic Japanese Literature’.  I inquired about it and then I asked him ‘So do you know what bushido is?’  He said, ‘Ah yes, the way of horse and bow, I believe’.  I said ‘Well…it’s the samurai code.’  He looked skeptical and replied, ‘Well, it doesn’t just have to be samurai. Being a samurai just means you’re in retainment to a lord, when really any (obscure word  referring to a wider class of Japanese warriors) could follow the bushido.’  I blinked a few times and somewhere my ego hid in a corner and cried, which was doubly sad because it meant I did not have honor unto my intellectual death. 

I walked up to the girl in the box office booth because I didn’t want to use the little impersonal credit card machine thing.  The entire vestibule was empty except for me and the girl inside the ticket booth was reading a huge book.  I stood in front of her as she hunched over it for about ten seconds.  Once I tapped slightly on the counter she jumped and grabbed frantically at her headset saying “Hello, hello, hello” as she got it saddled onto her head.

“What book are you reading?” I asked.
“Oh, uh … It’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe.”
“Universe? Are you sure it’s not … Galaxy?”
(she checks the cover)
“Oh, yeah! It’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yeah, it’s really good.” 

I see people from years ago and I know we laughed together and tried to see each other all the time, but now those days are over and our feelings forget them. Are you ok with how fast the world re-invents itself?

Time to be quiet and let the sky do the talking. Maybe I’ll buy an umbrella just to lend it out.

My heart is running on a thousand cylinders. Did you know it’s an accident we’re not friends?

This world is thick with a joy vibrating in my bones.

I figure if I post about sex my ratings will go way up, and let’s face it, it’s really ratings that I’m after.

It’s become apparent to me that sexual desires come in all different sorts of species.  How many different kinds are there?

1. A general desire to have sex with a certain gender.  In this state someone doesn’t have a specific thought attached to their desire: they simply feel a very general (but perhaps quite strong) sexual impulse.

2. A desire to have sex with a specific body.  This might happen as you see someone at a party or on the street or on a magazine cover and the desire to have sex with that body arises.  It can’t be a desire to have sex with the person: the entire content of your knowledge of the person is simply a body, and that’s it.

3. The desire to have sex with a specific person.  This one gets a little tricky and probably breaks into two separate categories.  Here is why.

People are made up of all kinds of stuff: thought patterns, behaviors, desires, attitudes, abilities – and the unique facts of their birth, family experience, and the ‘emotions of their life’.  Now I think that you can add a lot of these things into your depository of knowledge about a person and still not have a deep knowledge of them.  So we will say the first species here is ‘image sex’, i.e. the desire to have sex with your image of a person, which is probably made up a set of behavior patterns and speech tendencies. 

The second species here comes when two preconditions are met.  First, you have had a moment where all the bits and details you know about a person become secondary, and you see the them that is at the bottom of it all.  You see that you do not see, you know that you do not know.  I usually consider this to be a time when you come to know and reflect on a time the person spent looking at and loving something in the world that had nothing to do with you.

The second precondition is that you love them.  In this case you know a person but you also don’t know them.  It is love that is required for both of these things, for it is in this way that we see truly.  Love shines light on the person, but in so doing also shows us where the path veers off and says ‘More here that you can’t see’ and ‘Blocked off to all others’.

Thus there are two senses in which it can be said you desire to have sex with a specific person.

4. The desire to repeatedly have sex with someone.  Compare this to the way you hang out with people.  I might hang out with Doug based on a chance encounter.  But let’s say I am hanging out with a friend named Brian; in this case my desire is not just to hang out with Brian, it is to have a friendship with Brian.  My desire spans time.  I think this sort of thing is probably applicable to sex, although the desire here is probably tied to something like ‘I desire to have a full relationship with this person’ and having a sexual relationship is subsumed within that desire. 

So there seems to me these kinds of sexual desire.  The content of the desire in each case is different: they each correlate to a level of knowledge you can have of a person.  But knowledge and love are intimately connected, and you must ask yourself how each of these are related to time.  How much is time a part of the content of who a person is?  And how are knowledge and love related to the feature of time in a person?  And what is a person?