I’m sure someone would hear me if I screamed

But not today

I’m sure someone would notice if I seemed

Out of touch

Hard to find

But not today

- jump little children, not today

I’ve got nothing. I’ve written and deleted at least a dozen pieces tonight and I’m not getting any closer to saying anything special. I feel wired, but not for anything in particular. I get like this sometimes … simmering and stewing … when I’ve got a lot of things churning in my head, but no clear way of getting it all worked out …

Part of it is I’ve not had any peace as of late and it’s humid – two things that never fail to trip my psyche up a bit. I’ve been griping about various things and people lately, but as usual, it’s not the relief I’m seeking and thus I’m no less unburdened. I get like this and there always seems to be one person caught in the fray, and whether I want to or not, I come dangerously close to putting someone in their place and out of my way.

It’s funny how some people are open intuitively to others, and then there are some people who are only tuned in to themselves. These tuned-into-self folks are working my nerves because it just gets old always having to battle someone’s need to be more important than anyone else. I’m finding that I’m exhausted with trying to play along with these people – trying to carry on a decent conversation (and by decent I just mean plain decent: no I can top that stories, no recapping of events, no “one times…”) laughing when jokes aren’t funny, listening to their jabber when I’d best be served listening to that little, teensy voice deep inside warning me to bail out …

In Rachel’s holla to my last post, she mentioned that those who grow together stay together. Word. And cue the Al Green ‘cause I’m bout it. Once again, I’ve reached that phase where when surveying the people around me, I’m starting to re-evaluate who needs to be where. Consider it the "goodwill friend, riddance is good" drive.

One thing I’ve held as a sweet truth for a long time when thinking about my friends is this:

Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts. – Margaret Lee Runbeck

I’m at the point where I’m starting to crave quiet. I knew it’d happen eventually, as the city noise is starting to wear on me. But I can’t seem to find much quiet anywhere these days and that disturbs me, which makes me pensive, which in turn encourages me to retreat and become more of the hermit that my true spirit actually is. Quiet is space and everybody needs space. I feel that constant chatter is like static on a busted television set – it just goes on and on and it’s moving and all, but it’s still static. Part of what I was looking forward to in moving to New York was so that I could meet people who were going places (literally and figuratively). And I’m meeting them and it’s nice, because it affirms that life is about living and moving forward – growing. But have you ever noticed that as you move forward at some point, when you start to grow weary, you realize that you’ve accumulated habits and things (like people) that are starting to weigh you down? To that I say this:

You can’t leave footprints in the sands of time if you are sitting on your butt; and who wants to leave butt prints in the sands of time? – bob maowad

I’m just trying to be better and figure things out and live and just be – all of these things at the same time. And increasingly I’m realizing that it’s just not worth it, allowing oneself to get bogged down. It’s like plants near the forest floor who really want to grow, but there are trees and all other sorts of flora and fauna blocking the light … Light. I need light. Light as in people who encourage and appreciate the space of things in relationships … I feel I’m one of those people and the world needs us. There’s too much static and I’m tired.

And reading back over this I have the most serious urge to delete it all and just say kcuf it because I realize I’ve been whining (again). But I’m searching and for some reason this quote seems to be the only one I can remember and I think it’s trying to tell me something that I’ll discuss here soon:

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us. – herman hesse

Indeed. I am disturbed – but thankfully not in the clinical sense.