and maybe he is

here's the thing Dr. Phil thinks he is really helping people, or maybe he thinks that, and maybe he is. in that case good on you, Dr. Phil, helping people and whatnot.

at the gym the woman in front of me walking on a treadmill is watching the Queen Latifah show. a young woman is called up to face the audience. she is asked a question-- is the answer "la" or "lala"? i can't tell which she says but i guess she answers correctly because an unidentified brown hand reaches into the screen to hand her an air-sealed jar of ground coffee and the entire audience laughs. the young woman is laughing too she has brown hair she looks nice i wonder if she is really happy, standing there with her new jar of coffee?



i miss traveling, irish accents, days spent walking the riverbank, reading seamus heaney in his homeland, that horse following me the length of the fenceline, stumbling across abandoned castles and homesteads of famous poets. i chronicled my life in ireland on this blog and now i can't remember my login information-- i read the blog as if it belongs to another person, at this point i guess it does.


i wish there were a way to know if i was happier in the past or if i only remember myself as being happier because of neurobiology and the intricate and indefinite number of factors affecting memory. i mean i know i was a lot of sadness too, really a lot of it, but i was feeling, all the time feeling, and goddamn if that doesn't bring with it a constant undercurrent of agonizing, ecstatic joy. i see from the past three weeks (and too many times more than that) how relentless scheduling destroys feeling. i would rather live out of my car than stop feeling ever again; really i've been very happy living out of cars in the past; i wonder how much that air stream would cost me.

what i do know for sure is that i miss wandering, alone and with another person or people who really get the value of wandering. do you remember your fingers up my skirt late night on that bridge in Cordoba, later in that hostel bed, moaning i have missed this needed this your skin so warm. we wandered the streets of Madrid i stepped outside that famous deli walked to you sitting on that streetpost pressed my stomach to your forehead pushed fingers through your brazilian curls. i learned from you that love is real even when it is temporary, even though we will never speak again and i don't need or even want to. sigue buscandome. 


speaking of love i miss you that bridge that creek have i told you how grateful i am to you for letting me sit on that rock alone and smiling the dog padding along behind us? i guess what i am saying is that yes, i feel like it does.


there is more to say but i am struggling to write well. i am so tired. if you need me i will be listening to the tallest man on earth playing his tiny desk concert for npr.