As the world turns colder.

My room is pretty cold right now. Not even October yet. Sitting here in sweatpants, slippers, hoodie, and beanie. A friend of mine told me I was cold blooded and that's why I so easily got cold. I told him that didn't make sense because actually, cold blooded animals can stand colder temperatures better than warm blooded ones. He thought I was on a soapbox. I just told him it was the truth.

I'm listening to this band A Perfect Kiss a lot the past two days. They were big in the Maryland/DC area when I was in high school. Friends of friends. They are really really good musicians. The songs have just the right balance frenzy and calm. On a whim, I checked their website, and it looks like they are putting together a reunion show sometime soon. I'll be there.

It is weird and humbling to think that my own actions don't just affect me. I think it has always been a rough and tumble process to realize that I am not the main character in this story. I know it is selfish to think this way. I think most people do it, myself included. But truth is, I am not the only one who exists.

This struck me like a ton of bricks yesterday at first during my anthropology class. My professor and a student were getting into a discussion about whether "nature" is an actual realization of natural processes or simply a cultural construct of how each person views the outside world based on what man has built nature to be. (Good luck arguing either of those effectively.) The debate got too philosophical for me at the time, so my mind wandered.

As I was listening to my professor describe how he lives, on the eastern shore with his wife, commutes to the university on select days throughout the week, and does not have a television set in his house (only a radio), I felt small thinking how different he is from myself. And yet, here we were in this class, crossing paths for this one instance, this blip of a semester in our lives and what it means when people convene like that just to fall apart.

I am a character in his story as he is in mine. And that is disconcerting (but necessary) to understand. There is no one way to get through life. Moreover, I am trying to get in the mindset that life is not just something to "get through." That is difficult for me when everything feels like it is moving day to day, slow motion while in the process, but 100mph given enough perspective.

Am I living it right?
Do I acknowledge the other stories going on around me, in the lives of people close to me?

We all have the power to hurt or to heal the people near us. I hope we choose to heal.

We all need constant conversation.

Who is the luckiest in this whole orchestra? The reed.

Its mouth touches Your lips to learn music.

All reeds, sugarcane especially, think only

of this chance. They sway in the canebreaks,

free in the many ways they dance.

Without You the instruments would die.

One sits close beside You. Another takes a long kiss.

The tambourine begs, Touch my skin so I can be myself.

Let me feel You enter each limb bone by bone,

so that what died last night can be whole today.

Why live some soberer way and feel You ebbing out?

I won’t do it.

Either give me enough wine or leave me alone,

now that I know how it is

to be with You in constant conversation.

Rumi