On Voting

The problem has less to do with the activity and history of potential U.S. presidential candidates, and more to do with the inactivity of our citizens to communicate, encourage, and demand actions, decisions, and results from our daily representative governments - from city councils and state legislatures up to the inert, unwilling, and party-divided House of Representatives and Senate. We will have a successfully working democracy when we engage in a regularly practicing representative government. It's more than just voting - it is acting.

Enough with the muckraking and mudslinging, the slandering and pandering, and for your country, for your beliefs, for your families - do something.

"In  1965,  in  a  speech  at  Dinkier  Plaza  Hotel  in  Atlanta,  Georgia,    Dr.  King  said,  "History will  have to  record  the  greatest  tragedy of  this  period  of  social  transition  was  not the  vitriolic  words  and other  violent  actions  of  the  bad  people  but  the  appalling  silence  and  indifference  of the  good people.  Our  generation  will  have  to  repent  not  only  the  words  and  acts  of  the  children  of darkness but also for the fears and apathy of the children of light.”

To Miriam

My love,

From seeing you to writing you, corresponding with you to conversing with you, meeting you and kissing you to holding your hand and knowing you better, relating our separate pasts to projecting our future together, learning our individual sensitivities, experiencing our shared sensations, enduring our undeserved tribulations, surviving our self-induced misunderstandings, all the while laughing with you, smiling with you, crying with you, remembering the good things in our lives we never shared and looking forward to the wonder of our life we've yet to share, and the beauty, oh honey, the beauty of your eyes as you continue to offer me the alluring gift of your loving gaze and the scintillating warmth of your sensuous skin...

We've come so far so fast, so naturally, so well. I can't wait to spend every minute of the rest of our lives with each other, beside each other, inside each other, until forever.

I love you.

https://youtu.be/Qc9N8V04hdk

September Fifteenth

I wish I could explain to you why this date has great significance to me.

Nothing particular happened in my life on this date, nor is it memorable for anything either life-affirming or tragic.

An enthusiastic fan of Pat Metheny for many years, it was a thrill when twenty-five years ago I discovered this exquisite, contemplative piece, reinforcing this date and signifying my inexplicable draw toward it.

Twenty-five hours ago I discovered this beautiful video featuring this favorite piece, which I share with you before the day is over.

https://youtu.be/INxt7-6nnGA

September 23, 2014

I remember the first time I saw her. I always will.

You don't forget that kind of woman, that mood, that way of looking, that look. You never believe that you'll be at once lucky and cursed to bear witness to the event that is such a woman, to remember forever the exhilaration of the first instant when she entered the room, to feel forever the withdrawal from the last second when she exited it, in essence, exited your life.

I'll always remember her, her tenderness, her timelessness, a girl exotic yet familiar, though I'm certain her incomparable impression on my heart and on my mind were never considerations of hers. If she knew me at all, it was only as a face among others, admiring her, adoring her, desiring her, fearing her.

I've forgotten myself. I often do when in this frame of mind. Seeing her many vivid images, her many lyrical movements in my long, reliable, damnable memory, I prefer to live there in that wonder than in the opaque gray of my monotonic reality. I will live there in foolish hope, in grand dream, in humble imagination that she would look at me, unworthy me, bewitched me.

I remember the first time I saw her. And the last time. And every time between. I always will.

It Is A Dream I Have. (2012)

From 2012, this same day, though thankfully not the same situation nor person. Today is a better, better day, as will be the many, many tomorrows.

"She's not the only woman in the world.

I think of days that have not gone by, like the song says, probably even more than than days that have. And as wonderful as those past days have been - replete with scintillating discussions, deeply felt emotions shared and analyzed, sidesplitting laughter, even uncensored words and misunderstandings - I can only hope these experiences and more would be present in the future.

Like another song says, she's been with me now quite a long, long time and I feel fine. And yet we've not been together in person for almost all of that time, really only met each other twice. This doesn't diminish the daily desire to hear from her, know how she is, whether it's a well-deserved great day or even the worst day ever, at least since the last time it was the worst day ever, and also for me to be at ease in sharing how I am, though it's predictably the same old "fine" I always am. The truth is, I always feel better than fine just because it's her that I'm telling.

I could never ask her the question I would ask her in a heartbeat.

Regardless of our friendship, our history, our respect and love for each other, I somehow (probably more specifically than somehow) feel it would not be right to ask her the question, unfair to ask her, unfair to burden with such a thought, though I know I'm prepared to hear her answer either way. I feel I'm steering way off course now as I write this...what did I begin with?...

Oh yes. She's not the only woman in the world. But she's a woman who could come into my life a little more than she already has, and as she's already made such amazing impressions, I imagine quite positively and confidently she would be the only woman in my world."

I tried. (September 13, 2012)

I tried. Truthfully, I did more than try. We were generous with love, affection, intimacy, laughter, tears, and hopes. And where I brought devotion and honesty, you rejected them, choosing instead unequal and undeserving habits and thoughts concealed in iniquities and delusions undeserving of forgiveness and bereft of sympathy or understanding.

In one way, I'm very sorry. In more ways, I've nothing to be sorry for. And for many things, you've not been sorry enough, and probably never will be, given who you truly are.

But there are moments I still remember, and miss you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_8oNMov_M&feature=youtube_gdata_player

September 9, 2013, 12:33 a.m.

You danced with her that night.

You got up the guts to walk over and ask her, stood weak-kneed, swallowed that last-second acidic taste of fear, and before tapping her on the shoulder and entering her life for what could've possibly been the first and last time in your life, noticed her friends signaling your tentative but determined approach to her, making her turn to you suddenly.

The look in her eyes, those beautiful, bewitching eyes, and as you lost your ever-reliable ability to speak confidently, another's voice filled the surrounding air and, lucky for you, the nervous, short distance between you and her waiting eyes. It was Otis' voice, describing with the same tentative, cautious, yet equally determined start you demonstrated as you walked toward her, his arms and how they wanted to hold her, and if she would let them hold her, how grateful he would be.

Exactly what you would've said, too, if she hadn't already come into your embrace and started swaying with you to the great, great song that Otis continued singing, setting the tone and tempo for your dance, fulfilling your wish that you hadn't the courage to speak just a few minutes before, creating the memory that you'd write about one day many years later, as you listened to the same song on his birthday and remembered - you danced with her that night.

https://youtu.be/aUaO50nWnvg