Nothing's ever felt more like home...

Feeling like there's nothing at all...

Everyone has that moment I think, the moment when something so momentous happens that it rips your very being into small pieces. And then you have to stop. For a long time, you gather your pieces. And it takes such a very long time, not to fit them back together, but to assemble them in a new way, not necessarily a better way. More, a way you can live with until you know for certain that this piece should go there, and that one there. My shattering happening quite a while ago. Sometimes I have trouble remembering some of the details. But I know it happened for sure, for what stands before you today, is a testament to that. Piece by piece. Little by little. Into something I would once find unfathomable. And as I set sail to lands unknown, I am certain I have all I need to weather the storm.

Know that I'll answer the call...

The undiscovered is not far away, yet it's not something to be found by chance. It is contained within what is right in front of us. Reality is constant creation and destruction, and in this constant change is something unborn and undying, something that cannot be approached through the known or the past. It isn't seen through striving to become something based on ideals stemming from former experiences. It comes to that which is simply being, not striving. In this state, without the known, without knowing at all, with neither past nor future, is a space that is not filled with time. And in this space, the undiscovered and ever-changing moment exists - a moment containing all possibilities, the totality of existence, absolute reality.

Please make it work...

Let's go below zero,

and hide from the sun.

I love you forever,

where we'll have some fun.

Let's hit the road,

and live happily.

Please don't cry no tears now, 

it's almost Christmas, baby.

That sweet time of the year...

I'm swimming in a mirror...

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance. Our choice is to see it as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.

You can build walls all the way to the sky and he will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin him down with a hundred thousand arms, but he will find a way to resist. And there are many out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear. Those that realise that there are battles worth dying for, and that death itself is not to be avoided, but welcomed. For it is coming. Coming for our memories and our faith. Where will he be to answer the call?

My home for all seasons...

Heavy missing, heavy reminiscing...

The patterns are simple, but followed together, they make for a whole that is wiser than the sum of its parts. Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle; reinvent. Build a tangled bank of different facets of your personality. Don't be afraid to follow fragile threads. They might lead your to paths less taken. Take deep breaths; try to focus your thoughts. They led you to happiness once so they can this time as well. You can do this. You're almost there. 

Meet me at our spot...

There is no real ending. 

It’s just the place where you stop the story.

December knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale. Having admitted that, I would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find, as long as we knew where to look. It is simply a matter of finding a place of solace, where perhaps the sun is able to penetrate the gloomy sky. Maybe a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content with however life might have unfolded. To not get wrapped up in loose ends, because there are many, and so many more to come. To realise that it's not about having the last word, or getting a confusion of guilt or shame, or an apology that rings hollow after all these years of silence. It begins, in fact, with simply looking up at the sun, and knowing that, despite everything, you did the best you could.

To be loved...

I'm so afraid but I'm open wide,

I'll be the one to catch myself this time,

trying to learn to lean in to it all,

ain't it funny how the mighty fall?

Looking back I don't regret a thing.

Yeah, I took some bad turns that I am owning,

I'll stand still and let the storm pass by,

keep my heart safe until the time feels right.

And my wide eye gaze...

On an impulse he went into the room and stood before the window, pushing aside any doubt he might have still had to watch as the world was slowly covered in snow. Now nearly eight inches high on the lampposts and the fences and the roofs. It was the sort of storm that rarely happened anymore, and the steady white flakes, the silence, filled him with a sense of excitement and peace. 

It was a moment when all the disparate shards of his life seemed to knit themselves together, every past sadness and disappointment, every anxious secret and uncertainty hidden now beneath the soft white layers. Tomorrow would be quiet, the world subdued and fragile, until the neighbourhood locals came out to break the stillness with their tracks and shouts and joy. He remembered such days from his own childhood, rare moments of escape when he went into the woods, his breathing amplified and his voice somehow muffled by the heavy snow that bent branches low, drifted over paths. The world, for a few short hours, transformed. And he transformed with it.

I will be true, if you let me...

Not much time to spare...

Cry your heart out...

I wish I could say I let it all out that night. All of the tears, all of the screams, all of the lies. But I didn't. I couldn't. It would take something much stronger to bring all that out of me. Still. By the time the sun rose the next morning, one thing had changed: I was no longer full of shit. I walked in any direction I could find; needing to escape the gravitational pull of all the forces that were telling me I wasn't good enough. And there were many. I needed to wallow in uncertainty, without the balancing effects of my addictions to cling to. If I was ever going to figure out who I was, I needed to be a stranger again.

Oh my god...

I'm a fool, 

but they all think I'm blind,

I'd rather be a fool,

than leave myself behind.

I don't have to explain myself to you,

I am a grown man,

and I do what I want to do.

Rather be a fool than leave myself behind...

Isn't it silly to worry about the arbitrary moment some person long dead declared to be the end of one year and the beginning of another, as if our attempts to divide time into meaningful chunks actually means anything. Yet still, I seem to always get so nostalgic when this time of year comes around. Did I do enough? Will it be the best year I ever had? And like a mockingjay, it seems I won't get my answer until the very end, waiting for the countdown to tell me it's okay to believe in myself again. And my moment will come. Things will happen the way I envision, or perhaps nothing at all like I do, but still. They will happen. They will happen to me.