Letter To A Friend I Never Had

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I like people.  And then again, I don’t.  I’d never make it as a professional gambler because, while my experience with lies and deception go deep in my history, the expressions on my face give away too much – no hiding behind a mask for me. 

So, why then do I still have the feeling that I’ve spent my entire life hiding behind brick walls?

Human interaction is my life.  It’s my lifeblood.  Without others, I’d have nothing to write, nothing to say.  There would be no feelings or emotions to fuel my fire – and fire is something that sits in the dark of my belly.  I need people, but the truth is it seems nobody ever needs me.

It gets harder and harder every day to put myself out there.  Sometimes as the sun sets, my thoughts pour out of me, spilling across the horizon, melting into the pinks and oranges and blues.  Who ever really hears them?  Like the stars in the sky that go unnoticed, these thoughts just twinkle for a brilliant second, then somebody pats me on the head and I’m stupidly grateful for that. 

I’m not the best friend to have.  I speak my mind, throw my opinions in the face of others, and am impatient as hell.  I ask a lot of my friends in return – that they listen to my superficial ranting and raving and complaining. 

Every so often, someone comes along and humbles me.  Someone touches me.  Someone leaves their mark. 

I’m not even forty years old, and they’re dropping like flies around me.  The strangest thing is, they are people I have never had the blessing to meet, so why does it hurt like a whipping with a willow switch?

There isn’t a day that has gone by in the last eighteen months that I haven’t thought of Carolyn.  She passed away in March, 2009.  I can’t explain the connection we shared over the world wide web, but the loss of her slapped me so hard I can still feel the sting on my cheek.

Several months ago, I found out my friend Bryan died while incarcerated in prison.  To hear a stranger’s voice telling me this – it leveled me.  Bryan and I had never laid eyes on each other, but knew the road map inside each other’s minds as we traveled them together over years of correspondence. 

Tonight, I received a goodbye letter.  A goodbye, and we never got to say hello.  I’m already missing him, and I never even knew him.

No, wait - yes, I did.  I do.  Right from the beginning of our Facebook friendship, he touched me on a level that most don’t see, or don’t want to see.  Behind the funnyman, there was a little boy who pulled at my pigtails to get a laugh but saw, too, what was behind the freckled face.  Reaching out with random thoughts, shyly holding out my hand, it was reassuring to know that my fingers were touched in return – even if lightly so. 

It all started over a night of music celebrating the sounds of summer. 

This man, whom I will call friend because he fell head over keyboard into my parameters of such a label, needs one himself and has been failed by many.  How do I convince him to let me try?  What words can I pull out of my magic hat to convince him that taking my hand may be a chance, a risk, a gamble, as he wages his battles – but a better alternative than becoming the Quasimodo of the 21^st century?  Being alone is a sad thing. 

I don’t want him to be sad, but everyone is at some point.  What I want more is to listen when he is, whether at a distance or side by side.  Never do I want to miss the chance to know someone new, to create a memory that will bring an ember of warmth on a winter day. 

Am I foolish to fall in like so easily, so quickly?  Perhaps.  I wouldn’t trade it in for all of the sunshine, lollipops and roses in the world. 

Yes, Steven, there is a Santa Claus...

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     Steven A Green  Write Me.... ;-)

 Kymberlie Calkins Ingalls September 26 at 5:37pm

And what is it we are to write of to you, dear Steven..? About the heat today that is only saved by the cool breeze that whispers through the tall trees, blowing softly like the kisses of a southern belle across a gentleman's cheek?

Or how about the state of affairs today, tomorrow and yesterday..? The poverty that is rising from beneath the ravenous cracks of the very earth that has crumbled beneath our greed? The standards and practices of those who holler in demand, seeking attention from we who know better? The tragedy and the miracles that blend together in a destined dance of wisdom that one in a thousand will stop for perhaps one second to understand, to contemplate...?

Should we write words of love? Words of seduction to place doubt in your mind, possibly to be followed with a strengthened bond of matrimony chasing said doubts into the deepest, darkest corners of your mind where they will only rear their head on a black night beneath a full, mytstical, magical moon..?

Do you wish us to write of the touch of lonely that arises at 2am when the lost souls find each other in the universe and bond without a word or a sound, but a feeling - of comraderie at being awake when the whole wide world is fast asleep..?

Shall we write of fables, heroes and tall tales in the stories of princes and princesses, wicked witches, phantoms, merry bands of misfits and gift-bearing jolly old men? 

Or do you wish us to keep it at a simple hello, meant for a friend old or new, who is reaching out to us for a touch that will linger in your heart when a shade of blue falls upon your weary mind?

What is it we are to write of to you, dear Steven..?

~ K

Bridge For Sale

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Every Saturday night I spend at a racetrack, watching good ol’ boys and girls drive in circles and playing in the mud.  It’s a great American pastime.  Every Saturday night, for as long as I can remember, I’ve also stood and saluted Old Glory as the National Anthem is played, listening to those around me singing along, watching children raise their hands to their hearts, and then come the cheers at the same part of the same song every Saturday night – “for the land of the free, and the home of the brave.”

It is the land of the free, for some.  For others, not so much.  Perhaps my idea of freedom is different from those around me, because I see it to mean “equal.”  Equal in rights, in opportunities, and in benefits. 

Look around.  We’re not so equal, are we?  There is an entire population of people in the United States who are not allowed to marry.  Such a simple freedom, to be legally bound and morally committed to another person, and yet they are not allowed.  As in, it’s against the law.  And now I hear that there’s a movement to actually make homosexuality a crime again.  Are you kidding me with this?  It’s your way or the highway? 

Look around.  There are still people who are being policed based upon the color of their skin.  There are many in our country who remember what that was like, for it to be illegal or “frowned upon” to exist.  To walk into a building, to drink water from a fountain.  To stroll on the sidewalk alongside other human beings, to be hated simply because they came from somewhere else in the world, brought to our home under duress and punished for it.  To be hated for the slant of their eyes, or lighting a menorah.  Today there is a state that has set us back fifty years with their law allowing them to target anyone they think could be here illegally.  They could get a whiff of refried beans on your breath and demand that you whip out your proof to be here.  While I get frustrated too with those here against the law, we all know that it’s just giving too much power to some you know will abuse the hell out of it. 

Look around.  We are supposed to have separation of church and state.  I don’t see it.  We pledge to “one nation, under God.”  In God, we apparently trust our money – it’s written right on the currency.  It may not have started out pertaining only to a Christian God, but the majority have interpreted it that way and have run the marathon with it.  What if you are not a Christian?  What if you are of a different culture, believe in a different God, or Goddess?  But we are told to pledge our allegiance to both God and America, and should we, or more tragically our children, dare to utter a protest, even civilly, it’s blasphemy according to everyone who thinks being born in the good old U.S.A. means a judge’s gavel came with our birth certificates. 

Look around.  People in years past have gone to war to protect our “freedom,” and for those who’ve done it with the truest intentions in their hearts and their minds, I thank you.  But why should you believe me?  Why should you believe any of us, when so many have come home from various battles war-torn, chemically and mentally beaten, and abandoned by the people they swore to defend?  It’s shameful the way veterans are paraded out on holidays, but as soon as the fireworks fizzle, they’re forgotten about by a government who finds more importance in getting paid for a three day holiday than taking care of their soldiers. 

Look around.  There are people who escape paying taxes to support their freedom every day.  Free from having to work, having to earn their provisions.  Then there are those who lost half their income, that they work hard for, to support those same people.  Sure wish I had that kind of freedom.  Free to sit on my ass and populate the country more on a welfare dime.  Remember when “government assistance” was created to actually assist those in need?  Now everyone is under the microscope of judgment, because too many have gotten out of control.  It was stated last week that one in seven Americans are now at poverty level.  I guarantee not every one of seven qualifies for assistance.  Isn’t it pathetic that too many employees working for the big W can’t even afford to shop there?  Freedom comes with a price, that the upperclassmen have made impossible for the rest of us to afford.  Many have just flipped the worker bees the big bird, taking everything they can get their grubby hands on, leaving those who are truly down and out to sit with a shameful cloud over their head.  It’s not even that we live beyond our means, we’re simply trying to own the basics and keep up with the ever-modernizing world.  It’s not that I’m against paying taxes.  I’m against only some having to pay them, and seeing the revenue thrown in the toilet that only in the last few decades has everyone been allowed to use. 

Look around.  We are free to be a sick population, but not free to medicate ourselves.  It is illegal to purchase prescription drugs outside of our borders.  The US companies were selling to Canada, Mexico and B.F. Egypt who would then sell it to us for cheaper than our own pharmaceuticals were, but we will no longer be allowed to eliminate the American middleman who does not have our best interests at heart.  Consensual homosexuality, they want to make a crime.  Plain old screwing a stranger simply because they can is apparently okay, though. 

Home of the free.  Unless we’re  gay, colored in skin, or poor.  Free to speak our minds, as long as we’re pledging to God and leaving the turban at home. 

Eye In The Sky

Dear Moon:

Wonder sometimes what it is you see up there.  Such a cold, gray, gloomy color, and yet in your glow I see shimmering glimpses of color, reflections perhaps of all the eyes staring upon you, casting their wishes and shedding their tears. 

Do you ever wish you had the power to grant the prayers that are whispered beneath you?  Maybe you do bring life to those desperate pleas.  Maybe you are the Higher Power that has so many names and faces down here on Earth.  Maybe you pull the strings, change the tides, and guide our destinies, under the names of God, Buddha, and Venus.

You have been my friend, my watchful lover, my confidante and soul mate.  You have bathed me in spirit when I’ve lost mine, given me hope when I had none.  In your light I have cried, loved, hated, and healed. 

Is there a Man hidden deep inside?  Or are you just an eye in the sky, as the song tells us? 

What are your wishes, your dreams?  Who watches over you when you cry at the lunacy you see below?  Does anyone wipe the tears away, or do they just rain over us without your will?  Does anyone ever notice when you are big and bright and beautiful to behold..?  Are you a lonely creature, up there with no pets, playmates or passionate embraces?  Are you an eye of solitude, of judgment? 

In my questions, I seek the answers to myself.  In your strength, I gather my own. 

Love,

~ Me