Down is a place, not a direction.

How can anyone really want to be happy all the time?

I rode a melancholy wave all day. I swam through Satie. Again.

I thought about Oscar. Again. And again.

At length, I considered the inhumanity visited on boxers, dogs, animals in general. I wondered if I could be a vegan [and the answer for now is sadly, no.] I looked at boxer rescue pages and inevitably wept. I tried on the idea of falling for a white boxer. I tried to make it through a few more pages of Dog Years.

All day, I examined my life, probably once an hour, going over my choices like rosary beads. I traced the circuities of love and love lost and late night conversations, betrayals, confessions, summoning resources and strength... hours of trying to find a common language instead of placing a surgical attack. I'm steeped in my own reality in installments throughout my day. I review old conversations and touch them in my mind and trace their facets to unlock more meaning. Again and again... while walking, driving, walking again.

There is the reality of daily life and the distraction of the larger picture. It haunts me. What's real anyway? What do I do? How does anyone really know?

Should I close my studio and run away to Turkey? I could do it, you know. What stops us from making life-changing choices like this? Why are we so entrenched in the banal decisions we make every day? We have ONE life. One. Why don't we live it like every day is our last? Why don't I cash it all in and head for the Mediterranean?

I wonder..

When I was in grade school, I went on retreats to a Salesian novitiate. I felt clean and turned in on myself and able to touch things in my mind that I couldn't at home. I miss that. Not the part about god... but the introspective reverence. The hush. The retreat from distraction.

I realized by nine in the evening, that I'm not only fine with melancholy [which I knew], but there are times when I need it, prefer it.

Images by Laura Chenoweth