lunar soil

The whole idea of faith is such a magnificent concept in the face of despair. It feels almost fake until one is trapped between time, grief and loss. That space really is both the worst and most beautiful place to be. It's where the moon collides with the night. Where the stars disappear from the sky. Somehow it leaves one with the sense that beauty and pain must live under the same roof in order for there to be any light at all. Without blackness, there would be no need for the sun. And without the sun's brightness, there would be no need for life.

Somehow the knowledge that there is a sun that produces immense amounts of energy and light gives courage to the idea that the darkness has boundaries. The darkness can only last so long. And it's how one handles themselves in the darkness that is of rare value; almost more than how one may act in the light. Because it seems so easy to navigate one's way in the light. It's easy to know what to do in the light. But it seems far more difficult to know what to do in the dark.

Everything feels foreign when one is blindfolded and stumbling through familiar ground. Pain has a way of leaving one feeling like a foreigner even in familiar places. Everything around you turns into lunar soil. And somehow you are supposed to live the very same life you have always been living but trapped inside a spacesuit and breathing in dead air. Nothing stops with you. The world keeps ticking by while time has frozen for you. All you hear is the drone of your own voice and a few other ones. Ones that bring to mind everything and everyone who has hurt you or left you or forgotten you. And that same dead air. You wonder when you will breath fresh air again. And if there really ever was such a thing as fresh air in the first place.

The stillness. It's there with you. It's in you and surrounding you. It's haunting at first. It seems to threaten suffocation within your already close surroundings. Then slowly, curiously, it becomes the silent friend. It begins to fade from a shadowy mass into a crimson ghost and then, it combusts into a pure and simple light. The delicate glow begins to infuse a hint of hope into your being. Just enough.

And somewhere in a cold, hidden cavern within, you begin to believe again.

Green

I went to the store just the other to buy a bag of peanut M+Ms because the crave was on.  In the candy aisle, which was filled from top to bottom with all kinds of Valentines candies, I noticed a very strange bag of Peanut M+Ms.  They were all green.  Very, very green.  Each and every one of them were green.  And the same color of green too.  Sometimes they actually try and mix different colored green ones together.  But not these.  On the front of the package there sat one very large, round and green M+M looking rather enticing with long, draping eyelashes, plump, green lips, and dark, floating eyebrows.  All this was situated beside the slogan, "Green, the new color of love."  Very curious.  I put the bag back and found another bag of the peanut kind that held the classic Valentine's Day colors of red, bright pink, soft pink, and white.  I grabbed the all-green bag again and read the labels.  I read the labels on the pink bag.  All Peanut M+Ms alright.  And all for Valentines Day.  The thought crossed my mind at one point during the exchange that maybe the St. Patrick's Day candies were out too.  But after some debate I decided that the green ones were, in fact the Valentine's candies.   And after even more debate, I left the candy aisle with the pink bag.   

Not sure I'm ready for green being the new color of love.  I think of gang-green.  or puking over the railing of a sail-boat.  Mold growing on old food.  Dirty, crumbling spunges, the kind with the green rough surface on one side and the yellow sponge on the other.  I think of mildew.  And tangly, thick seaweed floating through the ocean.  Drunken green men posed as shamrocks slumping through bars.  I think of spinach unknowingly caught between my two front teeth and smiling at a very cute man at the next table over.  Yeah.  It may take me some me time to re-direct my thinking into green being the color of romance and love.  I don't even wear green.  Except for those opportune moments while eating spinach.