Light Goodbyes

One month into fall
I let her go
My summer flower
Showers have turned into light snows
And I know it's futile to fight it
I winterize and make myself air-tight
Yesterday was a rough night
Fevered dreams, burning
Yearning for resolution
The comfort of clarity
I clutch my pen too tightly
I walked away and said goodbye too lightly

I wrote this on the train this morning on my phone.  I know.  I'm wonderful.  It's amazing how many things can get done when I have something I actually need to do.  I wrote the NPPE today.  I had such a productive weekend and still managed to go over 900 pages of information (hardly any of it was on the exam by the way).

I'm thinking about taking part in Nanawrimo this year.  I've heard about it for so many years now.  I always dream of writing the great american novel.  My fear is that I'll end up writing about things I know... my life.  I fear that I'll be like Dawson rehashing his high school years with Joey in everything he makes.  I fear I'll be Jesse writing about that one night in Vienna that he shared with Celine.  I fear and fear.  Peace out.

Ransom

Love
I fall in too quickly
and crawl out slowly
Limping through life
Too short to reach my dreams
I scheme and bargain
Trading hopes for expectations
frustration holds me hostage
ransoming my youth

Just some ideas I had that I wanted to write down.  Peace out.

This Again

Loving you was a test I studied for
dog-eared chapter four
listened to paramour
Put my hours in everyday
memorized the lyrics
knew all the words to say
Prepared my heart
and fixed my past
vacuumed the floors and cleaned the glass
I'm ready ready for my chance

This again.  I know.  Sigh.  Peace out.

9 THEs

I miss her and the missing
Oops.  I meant the kissing
The imagining 
The what-if hypothetical situations
The winning and the losing
The bruising
The night before the last time I saw her
The burning desire
The fire
The river of feelings
The remaining days of the season

I'm not sure to be honest.  Writing while consuming netflix does not make for coherent thoughts.  Peace out.

The Jar

The optimist says it's the light at the end of the tunnel
The pessimist - the goal that can never be reached
We seek for hope to find
We die in ditches waiting for relief
I jumped hoping to reach the stars
Only to fall short again
Hope - remains trapped in the jar

The reference I'm making in this piece is rather obscure so I'll spell it out more clearly as a favour to my future self.  I just started listening to an Audible book today that is a series of lectures on Classical Mythology.  One topic covered today was Pandora and her jar (not box).  The jar contained all the evils of humanity and when she opened it, they were released to the world... but only hope remains in the jar.  The professor asked what that symbolized.  Is hope good or evil?  I say it depends.  Peace out.

Bones

Can't we just bury it?
This bone of contention 
keeps coming back
Always finding its place in the top three
on our whiteboard as we keep score
Who hurt the other more
That thing you said two years ago that haunts me
Still making me doubt my worth as a man
Questioning if I can see you with new eyes
Ignoring all the other guys that once found themselves
here
I fear this
I miss the easy days
Before all this decay set in
When our smiles were perfect
and had nothing to hide

I find it so hard to not be keeping score in my relationships.  I wonder if that's because I always think I'm on the winning side.  Maybe people who don't have a tendency to keep score are the ones who are on the losing side.  Does being the bigger person count if you keep it away as ammunition for a fight later?  I have an early meeting tomorrow.  Peace out.

Streams

I keep falling
colours and promises
into the same thought patterns
mountains and valleys
about the things I've lost
rivers and streams
things I used to boast about
milk and cookies
I weigh more today
pancakes and syrup
but I'm so much less

My mind has been juggling a lot lately.  At work, I'm juggling so many projects.  My underlings think they are juggling a lot and I tell them I'm juggling 3x what they are.  I stopped weighing myself everyday at the gym.  It got to a point where I was obsessed with the numbers and it didn't really matter all that much because they would fluctuate.  I thought going to body measurements would cure me of my obsession.  Today I discovered that my left thigh is bigger than my right thigh... even though my measurements 2 and 3 weeks ago indicated that my right thigh was bigger.

I'm rambling now.  What makes a person more or less?  I dunno.  Am I only worth as much as I value myself?  Or is my self worth the sum of the worth people have placed upon me?  Or is a person only as good as his word?  Do words have value?  And how expensive are apologies?  Peace out.

Different Ghosts

I'm still the same person
but with different ghosts
Rehashing steps and
Regretting more than before
I reread the history of my choices
and remembered how I ended up here
I fear tomorrow
as my legs grow stiff
refusing to move on

There aren't a lot of things I can do while on a plane while waiting for take off.  Most of my means of passing time involve electronics.  Even my reading is done on my kobo these days.  The only non-electronic book I had on me was a book about how to improve penmanship and I had already spent 30 odd minutes looking at it at the gate.  I had packed my journal.  I had planned to write in it while on vacation but I never got around to it... for some reason, I thought it was a good idea to read some of it on the plane yesterday.  Reading my journal is very different from reading this blog.  Things are more real because they are less disguised.  That's probably why I find it so much easier to write here.  I don't have to be honest with myself.

I checked ticket prices for flying back in November.  I can do it for $360.  But then I'll probably come back during Christmas too.  Not sure how wise it is if I spent ~$2000 flying home 4 times (July, September, November, and December).  I'm also studying for the engineering ethics exam.  It's one of the steps to getting my P.Eng which comes with a raise.  If I assume (idiotically) that means a $20,000 raise after taxes and I assume that it costs $500 for flight and associated costs, I can come home 40 times next year.  Of course, that's just an example of some of the crazy math I did in my journal when I was thinking that I might have had a shot at a job in Wpg 3 years ago.  Peace out.

Sidewalks

I put a little more distance between me and reality
with every footfall on the paved sidewalks
Things will be different on the other side of this road
this driveway
this boulevard
When nothing changes, I shrug my shoulders and carry on
believing the lie that things will be different on the other side
My knees grow weak
and my heart breaks
How do I say good bye?

I've been having quite an emotional time of things lately.  Had a strange/non-traditional break up last week that's left me a lot sadder than I original thought it would.  I also was able to go home for the long weekend.  Leaving today was quite hard.  Adults don't change much after 4 months but I know that I'm gonna miss so much of my niece's development if I only see her in 4 month intervals.  I'll try to write more tomorrow but I've gotta get to bed.  Have a pretty stressful work day tomorrow.  Peace out.

The Wanderer

I traded secrets for wheat
baubles and shiny things
Meanings trapped in word machines
The sheen from off the surface
preventing deeper gazes
I become the wanderer 
looking for my place
The race is on
I traded thoughts for a song
and the love of a red-haired maiden

I'm heading home tonight.  Whenever I go on "vacation", I always think that I'll have time to get all this stuff done.  I'll catch up on some work, I'll read all these books, play a bunch of guitar, watch a bunch of netflix, get my exercise in, sleep in, go out... It's pretty unrealistic.  Especially if I'm only going to be on vacation for 4 and a half days.  One thing I want to do is read as much of the Prydain series as possible.  The books are short and meant for kids... and Eilonwy.  Peace out.