Driving thru the old neighborhood

You ever do that? Go back to a place that was once home? The trees always look bigger don't they? Even though it's been vacant here the furniture is all in place and all the momentos are still on the shelves and tucked away in the closets so it still feels like home.

I had many beginnings here. It's like a door that was opened for me, maybe more like a big picture window that faced a direction I hadn't looked before. You don't hear that term anymore, picture window, those huge double paned panels of glass that looked out the front of your world.

I never had the heart to shut this place down, it's like a personal museum that I still come and browse occasionally. There are many beginnings here, the beginnings of what are now constants in my life. Many who have commented here are now gone, visitors for awhile, moving on or moving out. I believe people are less enamoured with this medium, the honeymoon may be over but it remains an integral part of many of our lives. It's not about frequency or quantity, it's about the connection to a community unlike any other. I devote considerable less time to the effort but it's no less important to me. I think you pass the passion of comment counting and settle into a cadre of people that remain with you, people that you don't brood about if you don't see or hear from them for a few days, people you trust to be there, who never go very far away. Five or six or eight of those far outweigh any comment count.

I've found friends and lovers here, in this very spot. I've aroused and been aroused here, barked and howled and lamented, laughed and have been saddened and gladdened. I miss it here sometimes because I was a freer bird here, more uninhibited, occasionally even a freak flag flyer. I talked about how I want to love and touch and be touched and how running a palm softly down the coutours of a woman I love is a thing of joy and bliss and beauty. I have a photo of my lover that takes my breath away, in it she lays bare on her left side, the rise and swell of waist to hip and her perfect pear shaped ass is art to me, like a perfectly formed vase, in utility is beauty. Her form most certainly follows her functions. I can touch her for hours and have.

I think love is very simple. It may be surrounded with complexities and confoundedness but in essence it's quite simple. To never tire of being with someone, to have them be your choice of companions, to never tire of talking to them about anything, everything, and to never tire of touching them and being touched by them. I think that keeps the vessel full. I'm not sure how and why something so simple gets fraught with difficulties, there are many reasons I suppose.

If I always want to be with you, always want to communicate with you, always want to touch you and be touched by you, then isn't it just a matter of maintenance and care? And maybe most important, perhaps even more important than what you do, is what you don't do. You are bridged to each other and a bridge burnt can almost never be rebuilt. Enough get burned and the foundation crumbles and you can't bridge the gaps.

Oversimplification? Maybe. But maybe we make it harder than it needs to be with all the debris that floats around bumping and banging into the pillars, eroding the strength of what was once firm and solid.

Like bridges over troubled waters.