North and South, East and West

My grandfather kept several video tapes for my brother and I and him to watch when we were little. There was Cat Ballou, there was El Dorado, and there was a baseball bloopers tape from ages ago. And I remember one announcer in particular saying, "The sun appears to have set in the East."

That's the one way I remember which way I am going if ever in time of lost travel. Good direction is a hard thing to find nowadays. Like man has lost his way. Used to, people knew where their way around, didn't need to ask which was was north or south. They could feel it in their bones, could draw maps with the stars in the sky. It was an old man, the man of history, the man forgotten now, it seems. Only remembered in fairy tales and in countrysides.

Sometimes it is good to take a trip and not know where your are going. To pack up and head out, your destination a question mark and not an X on some map. Half the adventure is wandering around.

But I miss not knowing where I am going. Drawing a line in the sand with a crooked stick. Send me from A to B. Let me meet wary travelers on the same pilgrimage.

We all seem to have lost our way.

The world seems sad. Painted faces, clown smiles, ways of acting out happiness in the same manner and fashion as we see imitated before us, driving in our large cars with our windows rolled up, to keep the sad world out.

It's quiet outside. I hate how much I like it that way.

Love is a line

I can't seem to recall the amount of people that I've met that have been hurt, are hurting, or have hurt someone. Rarely do I find someone nowadays who is completely green and happy and sweet and pure, in the sense of love. Is it Hollywood, her way of telling us stories through silver screens, impassioned tells of impossible love? Is it us watching our parents and trying to recreate or reanimate or reinvent what we see as love? Those feelings, all of them, are such an odd thing to behold.

Watch someone with it inside them, it's like a virus, a beautiful virus infecting every inch and every cell. Itching the skin, making the pours sweat, stirring up butterflies in a stomach. That's one feeling. But there are so many others. Maybe that's why love is so hard. It's not an easy emotion, it's not confined to only one dimension. It encompasses every one of them.

I took a Scientology test last year just for the pure fun of it. They had a machine, which was basically a battery tester with clamps on it, and they rigged it up to me. They asked me questions, simple ones like, "Are you happy with your life?", "Are you in love?", "Is there something missing out of your life?" And I answered all of them amibiguously, half because I just wanted to see their reaction to such vanilla, but also I found their explanation for such a device pure rubbish. They said it was an emotion machine, it could detect whether or not someone is happy or sad, much like if they are smiling or tears are falling. And I remember chuckling to them, just thinking, "Oh how love is so complex and simple." I smiled. I think I was in love with love.

To the broken hearted, hold on. Stitches will come, casts will be made, bones will be set. The doctor is in.