Special-ness

Special-ness is not measured in the exterior world but in the interior realm that ruled our childhoods...then imagination and creativity were the sustenance of being.  It is only later that the material world with the barometers of success and reward eclipsed the pleasures of play.  The origins of our art reside not in the corrosive value system of competition but in the sheer joy we take as individuals in using our mind to express the impressions of the heart.  

Compare yourself to yourself and  not to others.  At all costs, ignore the fabrication of self that has been invented and distorted to meet the expectations of others.  These are, at bottom, only illusions that we have inflated and given substance.  

Life is the now, not the idea of the future we had at 16 or the regrets of the past that gather around us on birthdays or new years (any artificial milestone).   Life is the now.   Life is the wit that sits gleefully on our lips at brunch with our friends.  It is the electric connection carried from body to body in sex. Life is the way words urge us forward, music attaches to our memories, and nature--in its intricacy and its simplicity--can completely engross the eye.  Now.  

Looking at your hands, in your eyes in the mirror, sharing your thoughts with others, sharing your creations....you are this miracle.  How could you be more captivated by any other bit of magic?  Are the stars stitching the night sky any more special than you?  Is the ocean with its rhythmic lullaby?  The complex coloring of a bird or a beetle?  They are all less so, less special than you because they are not you.  Unlike your own living, breathing, thinking, feeling form, these other miracles are a step removed.  

You are seven again and every breath expands you with your amazement at being.

Souvenir

Tadzio, we are at odds even now
across the dim room,
the linen dunes of this disheveled bed,
the white sand undulating,
before I know your name.

Wordless,
you were the pure perfume of beauty,
an intoxicant infused with the petals
of your eyes.  You were youth
calling...

What could I take away
from you that would not fade?
Your perfection,
an illusion made of my regrets,
is a mirror of memory.

It is not real.

If you kiss me, I worry,
you will disappear.  If,
in my arrogance,
I dare to touch you,
you will evaporate... faster
than the opalescent stain
you leave
upon these sheets.

Possibility

The young people plot and plan, crowding the calendar with a thousand things "too good to be missed." And we are jealous of their memories, still pages waiting to be filled. Theirs is a dance of possibility, the percussive insistence of childish expectations. No one sets out upon this journey wanting to have a failed life. No one, at twenty one, knows what a failed life looks like, how regrets can overcome you like a heart attack. When looking at your spouse, your kids, when looking in a mirror, the arch of years, of choices spreads into the infinity contained in human eyes. Regrets are questions poorly formed, amorphous in the fog of middle age.