Winter here in the land of Q.D. donut munchers is weird. Particularly the aimless, wandering weekend nights.
They seem somehow more empty than the workweek ones filled with the noise and chaos of tin flying machines.
When it is this still, things echo and feel brittle. There is too much hollow space for the cognitive distortion to gain ground. And that too often leads to dysfunctional choices.
Because behaviors change when the sun falls behind the Mitten. Things you never imagined yourself doing suddenly start appearing in the rearview mirror of recent memory. And like the sticker always cautions, those things are much closer than they appear.
Memories of pinballing inside an apartment filled with too many typewriters. Of too many hours spent using those typewriters to write wistful, ticky-tack letters to dead friends. The letters that no one but the currents of the mighty Owashtanong flowing west to the Big Lake will ever read. Only the riptides of a strange river can be trusted with delivering the secrets of that correspondence; I have confidence that the weirdness of the weirs will guarantee that privacy.
The memory of too many hours unsupervised by more adult influences. So it became easy to blast those verbose, 3 a.m. text messages. The ones burdened with too many ellipses. And not enough apologies. Because those are the hardest fucking words to find, especially now, when they are needed the most.
Too many shuffles of too many playlists. The ones made for too many people. The people who once found themselves loving me. But who rotated out of my life once they had taken what they needed. They can spin it however they need to justify the disconnect. But it was still stealing. And when the music ended, it left the soundtrack of my life muted.
That was just the cost of utilizing digital solutions in an attempt to fill analog urges. And the disparity of that fallacy leaves me stunted, stuttering and shuffling. Scrambling any way that I can to gain ground.
Because everything gets slippery in the winter. More so here in this strange Capital City, where the streets run weird and the donuts suck.
With the alarmingly elevated potential for slips and falls into heartbreak, caution must be exercised. She said that to me first. Which isn’t terribly surprising after twenty years.
She always was the prudent one.
But finding that firm footing will take patience. And that patience will be a challenge for me–it’s not something for which I am particularly wired. I am far more comfortable jumping off of cliffs.
I know that I cannot rush; I must first dust off the better intentions of my more tolerant angels. I must leave no harmful marks; I reject the possibility of additional complications.
The curves of this learning she is patiently teaching entices me; she will see that I am a better man because of her.
Maybe it’s not too late for this old dog fox to learn some new tricks after all.
