Foolishness

There is an unfortunate madness about love. It gives love a proclivity for danger, for impossible risks, for hurt and sorrow. It fosters irrationality and has a way of creating illusion.

There isn't anything greater than it, really.

However, there is only one who loves right, and the rest of us are left to gamble with what we think we understand of love.

We will always be young and naive in this sense.

We will always be the subjects, and it will always be our master.

Lessons

I spent the entire day in Chicago yesterday, and it was a lot of fun, but it just left me wanting more. There is a hardly a place that I frequent in the city that does not have some memory attached to it. Most of the memories are very good, and some of them are more bitter than sweet. Most of the memories, whether good or bad, remind me of things that I want terribly and cannot have. Other memories remind me of things that I love, and will have for the rest of my life.

Either way, leaving the city for a few weeks and being apart from all of my friends has given me a new perspective, and is teaching me one of the hardest lessons that I have ever learned, and I am not being the most obliging pupil.

My heart has this terrible habit of always longing for things that it cannot and should not have. My heart is always seeming to misplace its priorities, always seems to put the wrong people and things first. It refuses to listen to my head, to logic, and reason, and what it should know from years of experience. My heart, silly thing, is impulsive, shallow, and most unwise. It is also deceitful, deceiving its own self, and fickle. My heart can instantaneously flux between hatred and love, bitterness, envy, and selflessness, control and submission.

In short, my heart is my greatest enemy, most of the time. Lately, anyway.

If it would only be still, and for a moment remember who loved it first, who loves it despite its great and numerous shortcomings, perhaps it could learn to love properly.

Memoirs

The smell of fresh-cut hay is one of my favorite smells. This is very telling of how I grew up as a kid. The smell takes me back to lazy afternoons in the hayloft above where my white horse dozed in his stall, occasionally whipping his tail about to fend off flies. As I drive down State Road 32, past newly mowed fields, the smell fills my car. When I smell hay, I smell leather; bridles and saddles. I smell fly spray, which always reminded me of the smell of Fruit Loops. I smell the distinct smell of sweaty horses and sweaty saddle pads.

When I drive past a horse grazing in a pasture, its face obscured in a mesh fly mask that protects its eyes from irritating flies, I can instantly remember the feel of the mesh in my hands, the faux fur that wraps around the horses muzzle and around his ears. I can feel the fine hairs of his forelock slipping through my fingers as I pull it out from under the mask. I can feel the velvety softness of his tapered muzzle under my fingertips.

As I continue to remember, I imagine hooking my fingers through his halter, and pressing my forehead against his, sans fly mask. I imagine the feel and smell of his breath as he exhales deeply. I can feel his upper lip working over the top of my shoulder, where my neck and shoulder meet, his whiskers tickling me.

It has been seven years since I watched a stranger's trailer take my horse away. It has been 12 years since I first sat on a pony and took a riding lesson. Yet I can remember those sights and smells, the feelings and textures as if it was yesterday.

Summertime, summertime

I spend most of my day reading and wishing. A small portion of the day is devoted to job hunting and working my tedious Craigslist/Rentjuice job. Right now, I sit on the porch swing on my grandparents front porch. Across the street at the small basketball court, four boys are shooting hoops, swearing loudly and talking smack. Another car pulls up and three more boys pull up. Instantly, shirts are taken off, greetings are exchanged. The ball diamonds next to the courts are empty and quiet, with the exception of a few birds pecking about. The grass glows in the setting sun, save the places where the houses cast their shadows. Down the sidewalk a father and daughter work on tending the lawn. The little girl must be four or five, and her blonde hair radiates like a halo about her face, the sun illuminating the stray light strands that frame her round cheeks. She deftly maneuvers a rake two times her size, mimicking daddy. Dogs barking are heard from all corners of town. A four wheeler revs in the distance, down by the post office. Mr. Utterback peddles by on his bike, his twin boys in tow in a small cart following behind. Father and son start a game of catch with a football in the diamonds, and a girl sits on the far side on the yellow and green bleachers with her dog. Pick up trucks roll loudly buy in a small town consistency. It all seems picturesque, small town America as it should be. Straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

There seems to be no care of the pollution and destruction of the Gulf of Mexico, no hint of a war in the Middle East, of the rising crime in Indianapolis, just an hour away. There are just missed rebounds, "More time on the playground, daddy!", and a tumble off the tricycle.

Pick-up games of basketball, a turn on the merry-go-round, and slightly tattered American flags reflect the simplicity of the idea of the 'American Dream'.

Dichotomy kills.

Every drink numbs me. I do not even recognize the girl who stares blankly back at me from the mirror. Dichotomy kills.

fated to pretend

As I was saying goodbye to my newly adopted cousins, 6 year old Isabella charged through the front door out onto the porch where I was standing. "What happened to Arni?" she chirped. I couldn't believe she even remembered his name. She couldn't remember mine half the time. It had been months since she had last seen him. Braydon was right on her heels reiterating the question.

"I broke up with him." I explained.

"Why?" Braydon asked.

"He isn't nice." I lied.

I leaned against the cool gray concrete, resting my elbows on the side of the porch. Braydon was looking up at me expectantly from the front steps. I stumbled over my words for a moment, at a loss. "He was nice when he was here," he pointed out in his nine-year-old matter-of-fact way.

"I know. He was nice. He still is nice. It is hard to explain." I finished lamely. Braydon shrugged and stepped down onto the sidewalk. I was bewildered.

At least it didn't hurt this time.

Almost a week ago I was sitting on a park swing without too much to be concerned about, just a Systematic Theology exam that was coming up.

Today as I was sitting on a park swing watching my three cousins playing on the playground, the uncertainty of my future felt tangibly heavy. Things used to be so certain. I would marry Arni and live happily ever after, more or less.

Now I have the overwhelming feeling of having no place to go, no direction for my life, and just utter confusion. Everyone else's lives go on, while I am stuck trying to make a living in Chicago. On my own.

I can't handle 'on my own'. I have never really had to do it before.

Oh. Snap.

I owe Moody 1800 dollars by tomorrow. They aren't going to get it, so they are dropping my enrollment. It looks like I might be taking some time off... I have been questioning for awhile now if I should finish my time at Moody. I am getting tired of school. I am not that good at it. I don't even need a degree from Moody to do what I want to do. Yet so many thoughts are assailing me at the moment... I just want to be done with school and have a degree, but I don't know if that is what is best for me. I need cheaper options at the moment. And I am just so tired of school. But I want to stay in the city, because this is where my friends are... The thought of trying to find a job and a place to live is a little scary to me though. I am definitely not sure what I am going to do. I just hope that they don't drop my enrollment for this semester. That would be awful. I would try to get a loan before I let that happen. Oy. At this moment, coming back just isn't an option.