In the midst of an imbroglio.

So I wrote this awhile ago. I'm posting it now because 1) I haven't yet compiled my photographic tribute to summer and 2) I want to make sure I don't accidentally lose it. I realize that it's difficult to know what to say to someone's overly dramatic post so I forgive you ahead of time for not saying anything. We usually only know how to cry by ourselves. And now, I give you this...

For some reason this night was different. I didn’t exactly decide to drive, to catalog and file my life like neat index cards scribbled with blood. I merely continued going anyplace but home.

And I turned the music up.

I turned it up so loud I thought it could get inside me. That it would press up against me and swallow me whole. That maybe its rhythmic pulsing would replace that of my own heart, its manic celebration giving life to limbs too tired to care. With a feverish thirst, I wanted it to blast away my oppression like a melodic fire hose; each passing note latching onto a thought, unwanted partners in a dance. As if the strength of its sound could tear these demons from their breeding ground and banish them from eating my fleshy insides. I wanted to join in, to shout the words, to shatter the pretense of composure, but a soul so muted does not sing.

In the parking lot of a church, my traveling circus of untamed drums and roaring guitars came to a stop. Bleary and muddled, I sent bottled up hopes and confused queries into the voided dark. Piling up asking in vain attempts to get closer to myself, I doggedly searched remote corners of my heart for hinted feelings. Instead I got numb silence, stillness, nothing from the towering spires. Persistent doldrums of thought fell like the hammer of a metronome on my battle weary mind. Poised on a sloping ledge of wanting, I was prepared to do anything but choose. I’d vacillate. I’d sulk. I’d obsess. I’d wait. I would wait because whatever was right had aggravatingly never been made known. But this time I drove. And I turned the music up.