more stars than there are in heaven

Lately I've been walking in the mornings, very early in the morning.

So early the stars so brightly, so beautifully, it's like heaven. Heaven within only my sight.

Only mine, because no one else is walking the streets at 5.30 in the morning.

It's so dark I take a torch, a flashlight. I shine it when I need, or else walk to the light coming from streetlights. Sometimes I see cats. One morning it was a homeless man on a bus stop bench.

I saw him twice, head in hands, isolated, alone. I haven't seen him since that day well over a week ago.

I wonder, had my brother lived, would he be like that man? He'd have recently turned thirty-seven years old, and tomorrow, twelve years ago, he was buried.

When I ponder things like that, I don't know what to think. Why things happen as they do. How old was that homeless man twelve years ago? Was he so broken, so alone? Was he here, in this place, or far away?

I was far away twelve years before, in another country, but flying home for a funeral. Returning to bury one I loved.

And now, like those stars above my head, he is there, twinkling.

Someday the homeless man will be too. So will I.

I still believe

Been incredibly busy with another project, but it's done, for the time being, and then today I got a CD from the past. One that came in a cracked case, but the CD itself was fine.

Fine, just fine. And listening to it, oh my goodness! Speaks to me in such a way, especially one song in particular.

Like a siren, how does that happen?

Recalling from so deep within memories, notions, of something vast, huge, waiting, waiting for me.

Love, here at my fingertips, and all I want to do it...

WRITE IT!

Instead I'll crank it, write about it when the plate has cleared some...

But soon, soon....

small blue thing

Today I am forty-three years old. I've been that age for a few months now, but it's still as true today as on my birthday.

When was thirty-one years old, I flew from the United Kingdom to California, a trip full of trepidation, partly because it was the first time I had flown that far by myself. Over an ocean, stopping in New York City, at JFK, then onto Salt Lake City, finally reaching Sacramento later that day. A long day, one that was made even longer due to the reason for the travel.

Someone I had loved was lost, gone, the worst reason to fly.

Who wants to get on a plane for that? Not me, no one really. Not that I would imagine.

Yet, I was getting ready, steeling myself, aware I had to go. For as much as I didn't want to leave, I had to.

Sometimes you have no choice, some things have to occur.

Thirty-one is pretty young, now that I'm thirteen years past it. Only out of one's twenties, and that really young, a baby still. Feeling so grown, but oh, so young, so much time ahead, but not for everyone. For some, their twenties is as far as they get, as much time as they're given. Or as much as they allow themselves.

Sometimes that's the choice. A choice to fly or one to exist. We all have that at our fingertips, whether to fly, or to breathe. Free will, and I could have not gone, could have not flown, if he had chosen something else.

He didn't. And I was left with few options. He chose, then so did I. And landing at JFK, with still miles to go, it was surreal. The first time back in America in over a year, to a place I had never been, on my way to somewhere I did not want to go.

But unlike my brother, for this, I had no alternative. He forced my hand, and there I was, in 1997, my feet on ground new yet...

Home. Of one sort or another. And where his feet were, I did not know.

sugar twitch at 1.46

I wish it was PM. Instead it's AM and I'd love to blame starting this blog all on a sugar rush. But it's not that simple.

I can't blame Suzanne Vega either. Even though she's mystical and beguiling.

It's not even that I'm awake in the middle of the night. Although that might account for the boldness.

No, it's the usual scatty thing I do, led by somehting far more reaching than my left forearm which feels like there are creepy crawly bits inside it.

It's my poetic nature, which may or may not account for the Suzanne Vega, or all that happens when you select date added for itunes, and that was the last CD to be included.

Can I also count the slight, subtle rearranging of my right nerves along my foot, arriving there from my aching hip being in a good position?

I will offer the title of this entire blog comes from a cassette tape I made nearly thirteen years ago, when preparing to travel from England to America. While the title is lovely, it may be too close to the bone to turn it into a manuscript. Something that touched me, still is affecting.

In a bit the arm will subside, that niggly ache fading. My back and foot, they too will relax. And maybe, even within an hour I'll have returned to bed, letting sleep take over.

But what brought me here tonight will live inside me forever, a gentle guide, followed by memories, aged and frayed. Yet, no matter the condition, those bits are within my makeup, always present, never moving. Only me to be stirred, each step I take, day or night, and it's never wrong, never unplanned, never wasted.

Not always what I think, sometimes with a slight edge. Sometimes it comes from too much cherry pie too late at night.

Sometimes it's from something far more ethereal.