I know, it’s late. I’m sure you all have been waiting with bated breath to see if this evening’s thoughts were to ever arrive. Fret not, dear reader, I have returned. Even with but a few minutes until Tuesday arrives, and even with nothing much plotted out before sitting down to tackle the blank page, yet again- I will get on with it. Trudging or leaping forward, my mind and heart will wrestle out as many of the ideas and emotions encountered since last we met, via the dance between these fingers and keys.

So, dig.

The bitterness that had resided in my heart regarding what is known ambiguously as the ‘holiday season’- she is not what she once was.

Still not what one would call a fan of this time of year preceding the start of the new calendar, I don’t seem to harbor the mountain of negative thinkings that were once so prevalent when it comes to the end of December. I will not retreat upon the idea that so much of this is an overly commercialized charade, wrapped up in the pagan timing of the world’s largest religion celebrating the birth of the central character that so few seem to truly understand, or enact the teachings of. Two millennia later, we still kill and destroy. We still hurt ourselves and each other in cataclysmic ways, even if only confined to personal levels, though certainly not exclusive to such theaters. We celebrate certain murders depending on perceived sides, an entirely stupefying notion considering we are all of the same doomed, human ilk. You know, with even Cain and Abel being cut from the same cloth. We aggressively vie for possession and sensation, even if the cost to others might be greater than what an exclusively purposed mind might comprehend. We so often lack trust, deserved or otherwise, and so regularly seem to fail on lessons that should have been better learned by now, with all our access to history and literature, and such.

And yet, I know I have been more destitute during this annual session of mandated joy. A decade ago, to be exact. Nearly being crushed under the consequential weight of my decisions, just as a new phase of personal gain and accomplishment was to begin. Or so I thought, then. I suppose I had no idea what I was truly in for, not saying that I do even now. But there was once a lot more selfishness in your ol’ humble narrator, back in those days. Not that my identity is void of such notions today, there is just a better awareness of all that. And a better system of management for the not irregularly occurring self-centeredness. Converting these wicked energies into something useful, or at the bare minimum, something beautiful, even if only temporarily.

But each year, though the burdens have not gotten lighter, I am stronger for them. And the metaphysical dread a younger man once felt insurmountable, can seem so laughable now. And not just because of the distance that time creates, though that is not without its advantageous effects, but because each and every one of my skill sets for navigating this existential game have grown exponentially. And finished growing, they have certainly not. Addicted to the right kinds of challenges, or mostly right, I find even my idle time occupied. Even if with nothing but these layman philosophies, there are so few moments in this life where mindlessness is the mode of operation.

And with that, the clock struck midnight. It is no longer Monday, but onward, and onward, being that I have not yet turned back into a pumpkin, or what have you.

I was back in my hometown today.

Not a place I have regularly visited, not since my leaving upon the first moments of legal adulthood. It is not a small town, but rather a very post-Cold War American suburbia, though it was still smaller when I was a resident there. And not an awful place, with its worst crime being how boring I found it all. But out I got, and out I stayed. And after a tenth of a century of urban living, I now write to you, my dear reader, from a place where the winter nights only echo with a deafening silence, broken by whatever non-hibernating creatures make hoots and hollers in the dark. A truly small town, one that others claim as a place of origin, though not all that many. But for I, this is a place of reinvention, though not my first in this life.

But in the obligated spirit of the ‘holidays’, I returned to what was once the only home I’d known. Driving about with out-of-state license plates, on roads I once knew from the route of the school buses that took me and so many other Millennial souls to and fro to our state and federally mandated education sessions. I wondered if I would run into someone I knew. I did not. Though, truth be told, so much time and life has passed, I might not even recognize the human who might have seemed so important in the childhood now long gone. Found that out at the ten-year high school reunion, a few years back, just to make sure I date myself. A few folks coming up and talking to me about days long past, and I being unable to even remember their name, so off the actor went playing along, trying to remember what the hell they were even talking about.

Funny thing, though, and a stroking of my own ego, if you’ll allow- they all remembered me.

But as four wheels rolled about the streets once being the only ones I’d known, I thought of change. Passing by and retracing what had been- this person used to live here, I wonder whether they still do. Or at least if their folks still do. Down by that creek, I used to wander off and engage in the mild sort of juvenile delinquency such a disciplined and honorable young man might find himself trying, even against what he thought then to be his better judgement. That building there, it used to seem so much bigger. This all used to be trees, this housing development. The run-down looking gas station around the corner, the one where all my favorite sketchy kids would putz about, what did they call it? The emporium, that’s right. That spot seems to have cleaned up its act. There used to be a traffic light here, now it’s a roundabout. Wonder when they changed that. Easily could have been a few years ago, and I would be none the wiser.

There were two landmarks that have more or less seemed to have been minimal effected by the passing of time. At least from the quick external perspective the normal speed limit allows, while still safely operating an automobile. They are as follows: the pre-school that I attended, still there. And the local strip club, though I had never set foot inside that particular establishment. Only difference I could ascertain is the updated signs out front of each. Though the Pre-K still used an elephant for their mascot styled symbol. And the titty joint is still called, poetically enough, Smiles.

I pondered the infatuations and worries of my former self. The big questions, now seeming so miniscule. And yet, how unchanged I truly am. At the heart of it all, I still strive for the same ideals, when keeping them vague enough. The want for success, even through the varying definitions. Of recognition, though my metric for satisfaction there is unrelentingly adjusting. And, of love. And the ideas associated thereafter, always still there and sometimes just as hidden away. Embarrassed, or some kin emotion, regarding how much the ideas of young romance held impact then, and how despite everything that has occurred since the lovesick kid resting his hairline against the cold bus window thought and hoped about his future, listening to the Gin Blossoms on the scratchy radio at front of the vehicle- somehow, that itch of a whispered idea still holds court often enough, even when to no avail. While so many of my same gendered peers would go on and on about what I deemed nonsense then, professional athletics being a chief among them- there was that melody and poetry about me. As it is still about now, though certainly more Waits than Bacharach. Though both elements exist, along with all the in-betweens.

And I’m glad for that. Not stupid enough to count on it ever occurring, I am still fool enough to hope that it might. Despite the many roads this life of mine has taken that have diverged my existence beyond not only my peer group, but much of the closely associated society at large- the desires still rage enough at the core to keep many an ember alive.

And unlike so many of those baseball card and football jersey wielding youths I was once surrounded by- the questions of what it means to be a man, internally, has held fast. Not fickle competition or instantly gratify accomplishment, no, those are ideas for children, and the lesser advanced among them. Perseverance- that’s the idea that they always missed. And obligation, not only to those whom you might find important, but to those ideals and stances that represent those inexplicable and yet universal understanding of greater good. That which lives beyond us, and not in the ‘religious’ and ‘spiritual’ ways- but in the actual. The way the stories of our dead live again in our retelling of them, and such.

Masculinity, according to yours truly, is not about dominance or acquisition. That reeks of little more than insecurity. It is about acceptance without capitulation. It is about management between fantasy and pragmatism, without surrendering either which way to either such extent of operation. It is about acknowledgement of limitations, and still fighting to defy them all the same. It is being determined without being stubborn.

Or so says I, with the caffeine vacating my blood stream, and the length and breadth of the day taking its toll on this consciousness, albeit only temporary.

So, that’s enough, I think, for tonight. I’ll see you next week, I hope. I’ll do what I can to make it worthwhile. It’s the least I could do, for wasting your time.