Adoration in spite of disdain. Victory in the face of defeat. Admirable ideas. But I think I’d like just a plain old victory, now and again. This heart, I know it can bear a lot, but perhaps I might like to not be constantly extending it to and beyond its limits. Something not straining or excruciating. Something simple, unassuming.   

Or maybe, I’d hate that. Too much masochism built into habit. Too much boredom found in the ordinary.

Or so were the workings on my internal monologue this morning.

But I think of my habits, both grand and deplorable. The workings of benevolence I cultivate, along with all the less than desirable desires that manage to sway and conspire how I think and feel.

Being bold for others while too timid in some of my own aims and ambitions. Modesty, incorrectly enacted. Or maybe the audacity of confidence is kept at bay correctly, if not insufficiently.

All the little tricks to keep going, for as long as you can fool yourself, or others. But sometimes, or always, eventually, the tricks run out. Smoke dissipated. Mirrors, shattered, and all the bad luck that might ensue released from the shards.

These are always about life, these ramblings, when left vague enough in description. And so often they are little more than reflections upon my own living. My own existence.

Life is fragile, but is it as precious as we so often like to claim? Meaning objectively.

If it were, why is it then so easily lost? So quickly broken, so simply squandered? Is it the gift itself, or all in how the thing is received?

Been talking to ghosts lately. Well, a ghost, in particular.

The problem, or at least one of the problems, is when not believing in such things as ghosts and spirits (as I tend not to), who then are you (am I) talking to? Yourself (myself)? Slippery slope there. Best to not get the guy that lives in the mirror involved. Nothing but trouble, that one. But there is no escaping it, at least not in any conceivable means that I find fitting or viable.

I think of paths weaved and severed. Some so long ago that origin or sense of desistence is no longer strongly recalled, if even at all anymore. The settings and characters that make up the stage production of your humble narrator’s story. How they enter and exit, some to return before the curtain, some who never leave, or never enter again.

I can never get very far into any day of waking consciousness without thinking of my faults. My failures. Gets me in the ol’ unconscious mind as well. Nocturnal visions ripping apart a sense of self and security that is regularly hanging on by little more than threads. So much easier for me to acknowledge than any success.

Missteps, mistakes and misunderstandings. Thinking one thing while the rest of the sentients are so sure of something else. Or at least among the parties immediately concerned, in proximity.

I think of partings- rejected, expected and otherwise, the traumatic and the like. And of meetings and how briefly it takes to begin to know someone. Or how long it might take, depending on varying factors like personality reclusions or dishonest fronting. Sometimes instant, or over days, years, lifetimes, etc. You can never surmise the inside workings and wirings of another, even in the most educated tries. You can only get close, if you can even manage to get that far.

But even with all my dedications and longings, the idea of purpose beyond myself hovers around, in a seeming state of perpetuity, even when not thunk up in the active forefront of mind. Always there, even when off stage.

Are we destined by our desires or our duties? Or are they more in the same than we generally ponder them to be? All of us, pieces on an imperceptible board? Or just lacking a more complete understanding of how much a master of our existence we might actually be, if we ever get to being more fully realized? Not being unable, but unsure of the control that we might have over the reality apparatus.

But anyway, a few days ago, I spent an evening in the company of mostly strangers. I had almost forgotten how much I enjoy such circumstances. Things get lost, sometimes, when surrounded by too many people you already know. The experience is then molded by the preconceived social standards and standings, rather than in the raw state of existence.

They were making music, these mostly strangers. That is generally how I bridge the gap between the unknown folks and etch them into more known relations. There can be such honesty in song, though sadly, not always. Sometimes the act is honest and the rest is a lie. Sometimes the songs themselves are further crafted deceptions otherwise claimed as truths.

That did not seem to be the case the other evening.

And within all that, there was a moment that almost moved me to tears in a room of people I didn’t know. A certain stoicism managed to keep the unstable emotes on the inside until solitude could be regained again.

It was a line, in the song. I wrote it down, so I believe it is being correctly recalled. It is not my line, and I can tell you where I got it, if you ask. I aim not to be a thief, especially in such intimate endeavors as the crafting of tunes.

‘You can’t always get what would help.’

Mixed with a tone that seemed to match the somber bouts of thinking I’ve had over this lifetime, but especially the last few months. Perhaps the visibility of impact upon me was more noticeable than I seem to suggest. I wouldn’t know, and I didn’t ask anyone that was there.

But that line. We so often think of getting what we want or what we need. But something about being unable to acquire or receive that which would help us most, whatever predicament or catastrophe we find ourselves, struck me with a potency that I was not prepared for. To not get what would help, and the implied state of having to carry on anyway. So very human, so very doomed.

I told a friend earlier that I seem to be bouncing between the feeling of collapse and reconstruction. It goes day by day, moment by moment. I know I cannot, meaning collapse, not yet. And not for a very long time. But that doesn’t mean the idea isn’t still bouncing around, playing with my mental chemical balances and moods.

But had I collapsed, none of these words would have fallen out of my head. For better or for worse. So build, again. It seems the immediate fate for me. I don’t know how, and so often cannot even contemplate why- but I know that onward must be got.

But, for tonight, I believe my carrying on will be gotten at elsewhere. There is nothing more I feel to say here, now. And perhaps I said too much with little more than hot air as outward support. But the good habit gets got at again. Another week. And I know that I am better for it, even if in some immeasurable way.

But the evening calls me elsewhere, so I’ll get on to it. Until next week. Or if I manage to start writing some poetry again, you’d be able to read that, as well. I don’t know the next step, but I’ll still be taking it. I must, after all. As much as I can get down on myself, and believe me, I can get real down low- I don’t have the quit in me. Not yet, even with all that I have seen and know. And not anytime soon, as far as I can tell.

But anyway.

Maybe I’ll go howl at the moon tonight. Better than whimpering to my own reflection. Or some digital abyss of all that isn’t.