i’m too young to be this tired this early. at least thats what im telling myself. i want to be sleeping, but these words would just tear at the insides of my eyes if I tried to go to bed now.
This ones for you, Sam.
i often describe life as circles and cycles. like ever widening orbits, still following essentially the same axis but gradually widening with each pass. every time i come around, i know i’ve been past something like this. these circles hold more truth about me in their circumference than i care to admit.
certain things always remain somewhere within the pull of the center of me.
music – I love making it. I love watching it be made. It fills my heart and soothes my soul. It has the capacity to transport, transcend and transform.
photography – I call them my impulses. The moments of observation that turn into a white hot need to capture. Mason was driving my car in SD, I probably scared him half to death as I gasped and demanded that he stop. I jumped out of the car, ran into the street, and snapped this shot. 
My trusty little digi (I really should name her) is always with me, forever extending the reaches of my memory and imagination. The photos I take serve as emotional bookmarks…as snapshots of what I see on the inside, and try to create on the outside.
the written word – As a child, the largest piece of furniture in my bedroom was my bookcase. No petite affair, it consumed an entire wall. As first, the shelves were filled with the staples of a suburban 1980′s childhood library with the extra space taken up by toys and such. The first book I remember reading on my own was the adventures of tom sawyer. My mother bought it for me at the supermarket near the house I grew up. I couldn’t have been more than 7. Soon after, I discovered the Little House on the Prairie series. I lost myself in those 8 books, over and over. Looking back, I can recognize the impact that they had on my life. Lessons in humility and patience… Lessons in resourcefulness and perseverance. I even learned a few practical things, lessons in basic farming and a taste of good old fashioned courtship. I talked to my Mom about this long standing love affair recently. She remembers me being so enthralled by the world contained between those tattered yellow covers that I wouldn’t hear her calling me for dinner. I admired the pluck and courage of laura, the sweet simplicity of the time. Even now, part of me longs for a simple farmhouse, with a cottonwood swaying gently in the breeze outside the kitchen window, and a good man coming home to me. Even all these years later, I’m fairly certain I could tell you all the stories woven so lovingly by that brave girl who never let the lonesome expanse get the better of her.
By the time I was 18, every shelf was crammed, shelves bowing with the weight of my beloved books. Fairytales and science fiction, rescued encyclopedias (an elderly neighbor passed when I was about 10, and I rummaged through her things when her kids put them all out on the curb) anything and everything was lovingly scooped up and hoarded. Even then, I knew.
Now, it’s the forgotten ones that call to me. The formerly beloved books, careworn and smelling like … like… like yellow and tan and mystery and history and something that can’t even be explained. Its like trying to describe to another how the warm skin of your lover smells like sleep in the morning. Please, if you’re reading this and you have no idea what I mean, do yourself a favor and go sniff an old book.
I’m serious. It’ll make so much more sense once you know what I mean.
